


Hearse

by nextboldmove



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Bondage, Borderline rape and non-con between Dean and Cas, Cas and Sam get drunk and confused, Cas is angry at Dean, Demon!Dean, Drug Use, Endverse, Lots of Sex, Lucifer and Michael are dicks, M/M, More angst, Rape, Sam has feelings for Cas, Squick, Suicide, Temporary Sastiel, Torture, human!Cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-02-09 05:15:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 19
Words: 52,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1970331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nextboldmove/pseuds/nextboldmove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four years after Dean’s death, the apocalypse got a reboot. Now Sam and Cas are living in a small camp of survivors, running from the horsemen and trying to figure out how to stop Lucifer and his new ally, Michael. Cas and Sam try to make it in this new world while Dean figures out how to be comfortable with his new situation. </p><p>It's only a matter of time before Crowley gets his claws into Dean, and Sam and Cas start to live life without him. But when a pair of demons rescue them for a bad situation and won't tell them who they work for, Sam and Cas start to question the last four years of their lives.</p><p>*This is eventual Destiel, but there is some confused Sastiel along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I decided to get this plot bunny out of my head. It's going to be long because I tend to do that. This story is SLIGHTY AU in that some of the cases being worked are different, and some canon divergence, but I weave what is canon into the tale in other ways, so it’s spoilery for all seasons for that reason.

PROLOGUE

“Is heaven open to souls?”

Hannah nods. “I’ve received information that new souls arrived just moments after we imprisoned Metatron.” She smiles at Castiel. “All the angels are returning, and the souls that were trapped in the veil are arriving as well.”

“Thank you Hannah,” Castiel dismisses Hannah, leaving himself alone in Metatron’s library. His library now. No, not his library. He should burn it. It’s too much power to be held by any one angel. He should burn all of heaven to the ground and destroy all the angels but he doesn’t have the strength. Hannah hinted that he could steal grace, probably from Metatron, but there’s no point.

Dean is dead and he can’t bring him back.

Castiel crumples to the ground amidst the stacks of books and begins to weep.

~

Dean stands from the bed, looking at Crowley. “What have you done to me?”

“I, I’ve done nothing. It’s the curse of the mark. Murder taints the soul, dearest squirrel.” Crowley holds out his hand. “Come with me.”

Dean holds out the First Blade between them. “Why should I?”

“Because now that you are dead, the mark is useless,” Crowley smiles. “You keep it until it’s passed along, but you can’t use it anymore. You’re like a little carrier monkey for the murder virus.”

Dean drops the blade and walks over to the mirror in his bedroom. He looks at himself and sees black pools for eyes staring back at him. “I have the anti-possession ink, how did this happen?”

“You died, once you are an empty meat suit that little tramp stamp is meaningless. Now come on, let’s go frolic in the night,” Crowley extends his hand.

Dean looks at Crowley. Something is different, something has changed. Crowley is letting his emotions show, he looks almost happy. Dean steps back. “Fuck you. No, no way I’m NOT ONE OF YOU! I AM NOT A DEMON!’

“Hate to break it to you sweetheart, but you are.”

“D…d…d…”

Dean and turns to see his brother standing in the doorway, face red from crying and mouth open. He braces himself on the door frame before sliding to the floor.

“SAM!” Dean goes to his brother and cradles his now unconscious form. “I’m so sorry Sam, I didn’t do this on purpose, I’d rather be dead.”

“You are,” Crowley says, crouching next to the brothers. “Don’t you think we should leave?”

“I’M NOT LEAVING SAM!”

“Dean, Dean, Dean. You can’t be here like this. Sam will end up making a deal with me, or worse, to get you back to your old squirrel self. Not that I could even do that, the Mark’s damage is irreversible. If you leave now you save the giraffe a whole world of pain. He can go on with his life, find a Misses Giraffe and make lots of very tall babies.”

“Since when do you care about making people happy Crowley?” Dean bites.

“Since I main-lined human blood and grew a heart,” he says quietly. “Are you coming?”

Dean looks down at his brother, quiet in his arms, and doesn’t care if Crowley just wants to keep him to himself. He can’t do this to Sam. Sam will always be in danger, from other demons and hunters. From angels, if Dean sticks around. But Dean just can’t leave Sam alone, on his own, vulnerable and unsafe. Like hell is he going to run with Crowley and the rest of the hounds. Dean holds his brother tightly, kisses his forehead quickly and stands. “I won’t be your slave.”

Crowley shrugs. “All my followers have free will.”

“The freedom to choose being tortured in the pit or follow orders. Go.” Dean looks down at his brother. “I still have the Mark and the blade is right over there.”

Crowley sighs. “You know my number squirrel.” With a snap of his fingers, Crowley is gone.

Dean takes a deep breath and walks out of the room.

~

“Do you feel that?”

Michael lifts his head. “Yes. There has been a shift.”

Lucifer smiles. “There has indeed. I think we may be going topside rather soon, brother.”

~  
~  
~

CHAPTER 1

Four years later, somewhere outside of Somerset, Wisconsin…

He thought riding a bicycle would be a good idea. He wouldn’t have to stop and siphon old gas from even older cars. He could move through abandoned vehicles on the vast stretches of crowded highway—even pulling a makeshift trailer full of supplies, and it moved fairly quietly through the landscape. After the third day, his ass hurt and thighs cramped whenever he laid down to rest. He had maybe one day left to go on this thing to get back to camp. He could do one more day. The cramps should stop and his ass, well, it’ll get better soon enough. The first snow should come any day now and he’d rather get back before it does. Once the heavy snow hits there is no way to go on these supply runs.

Sam Winchester peers through the grime on car doors as he rides by, looking for the perfect birthday gift for Cas. Not that Cas had a real birthday, but after he found out Sam’s birthday he picked October 20, tomorrow. He said he liked the leaves in late October and thought the colors would be festive. Sam hasn’t seen anything that he thought Cas would like. It’s all rather depressing things—photo albums, camping gear, the occasional teddy bear. 

Cas has been in a particular slump lately. During the last hunting trip, two of their men were infected by Croatoans—people infected by Pestilence. Cas lost his grace nearly four years ago, after managing to complete a spell that could drain the last of it away without killing him, permanently sealing his human form. He couldn’t save the sick, so instead Sam and another camp member had to take them into the woods and execute them before they brought the disease back to camp.

Sam thought he would have the upper hand having dealt with the horsemen before. But after Lucifer and Michael freed them, they rebelled and bound themselves to each other and became free agents. The end of the world is messy and everyone is out for themselves. The couple dozen people back at camp where the only ones willing to trust in another human being. Sam was never able to find out how Lucifer and Michael got out of the cage, but he supposes that it was something Metatron had set into motion long before Cas imprisoned him. Or maybe it was someone else, dumb like he had been, who opened the gates back up. The death of Abbadon left demons divided and they may have figured out how to open it. Maybe it was Crowley. 

But whoever it was hadn’t counted on Michael becoming Lucifer’s ally. All that time in the cage and Lucifer had worn Michael down, convinced him to join his cause. Now the all of humanity was toast.

Sam stops when he sees something catch the sun from the front seat of an otherwise empty Jeep Wrangler. Popping open the door, he sees it. A small glass prism on the end of a string. Cas would enjoy the patterns of colored light on the walls of his bedroom in the morning. Cas always enjoyed the simple things and he would be very appreciative of this. Cas was always hopeful. Even after Dean died and he sealed his grace out permanently, he always talked about what to do next. Sam caught him crying in his garden after Sam had recounted a story about Dean as a child. Cas doesn’t talk about him. Cas doesn’t even mention Metatron. In fact, Sam noticed that the day Cas came to him and told him he was human, that his eyes were just a little less blue than they had been before. 

~

“Sam.” Cas approached the man as he walked up to the abandoned house the two men shared.

Sam hugged him back. The man felt tired and all too skinny against him. None of them really gets enough to heat, what with all the physical exertion trying to hunt and build and farm requires. He looks down at the bicycle behind Sam. “Did you ride that?”

“Yeah,” Sam goes back and retrieves his overnight pack and another small backpack. Small enough that it looked like it belonged to a child. He approaches Cas and hands him the bag. “I found a couple of bars of soap. I gave most of them to Mick but I kept two for us. I also found an empty canteen we could sterilize. And in the front pocket I found you something else.”

Cas takes the bag and immediately goes for the front pocket. His fingers find a small hard object and pull it out. “What is this?”

“It’s a prism.” Sam gently takes it. “You hold it up to the light and see?” He holds the prism up with one hand and uses his other to catch the rainbows. “You put it in the window to catch the light.” He hands it back. “Happy Birthday.”

He takes the prism and cradles it in his palm. Sam must have gone through considerable effort to find this for him. That fact alone makes it precious. If Sam had brought him a beer cap it would have meant just as much. “Thank you, Sam.”

Sam nods. “I gotta lay down, I feel like the seat of that bike is in my colon.”

Cas nods back and takes the backpack and sits on the steps leading into the house. He waits until he can hear Sam’s footsteps on the creaky stairs leading to the second floor before he holds the prism up to the slowly vanishing evening sun. He can see his breath. It could snow any day now. He spent all day with Laura, Mick and Debbie collecting every last edible plant, fruit or vegetable from the garden for canning tomorrow. Cas tried to learn to can last year but he accidentally exploded three jars and that was a lot of wasted food so this year he’ll go around to the homes in the camp and make sure they are weatherized as best they can be. He knows Sam is tired and will need a break, and he’ll tell Sam to take a day off, but by lunchtime Sam will be right next to him helping 

Cas doesn’t like to tell Sam that he reminds him so much of his brother. He both enjoys and abhors his company. Sam is familiar after all these years before and after the second coming of the End of Days. But sometimes he smiles like Dean did, or rolls his eyes like his elder brother. Just enough to make Cas’s eyes fill up with hot tears at random times. He told Sam it was allergies, that Wisconsin had lots of tree and plant pollen during the warmer months. He still can’t believe Dean is gone. Everything he did was for Dean. When he swallowed the Leviathans from purgatory, he did it to become the God that Dean had no faith in, to change the world and make it a place that Dean could lead a normal life. Dean wanted to kill Metatron, so Cas did what he could. He was too late, but he did eventually lock him up. Dean would have been happy, right?

It was a good thing Dean died before he could see the second End of Days. Shortly after Cas heard of his passing, the cage was opened. Michael was able to tap into Angel Radio and dialed up the angels, announcing his new allegiance to the leader of Hell. It was only a few days later that word came of strange deaths, demons killing demons. Cas came down to investigate with Sam and confirm his suspicion—that the Horsemen had returned and War was making his way through. Famine soon followed, and it wasn’t until Pestilence rode through town that they found out that whoever let them out gave them a spell to bind themselves to each other. They were not under the spell of Lucifer, but under their own control. They showed no Mercy, and they had become even stronger under their own rule. Castiel had no idea how they got their rings back, nor who let the free, but that didn’t really seem to matter. He had sold the last of his grace to Crowley for that information, not that he would have told Sam the truth.

He looks to his side to see the faint glimmer of green and yellow bouncing out of the prism and onto the peeling siding of the old house. He hears the two children in the camp giggling in the yard next door. Laura’s children—Christopher, who is ten, and Luke, who is six. Cas stands and finds a nail sticking out of the top of the small overhang above the front door and hangs the prism before going inside to boil water to sterilize for the bath that Sam will want when he wakes up.  
As he closes and locks the door behind him, Castiel remembers that Dean was four years old than his brother too. He bites the inside of his cheek so hard that it bleeds but at least he doesn’t full out cry. He doesn’t want to wake Sam.

~

Old gunky grease drips down from the engine and onto his cheek, but he doesn’t even wipe it away. He knows he’ll never actually get this car purring again, but he needs something to do to distract him.

Tonight is the Anniversary.

He gets the oil pan off and sees animals chewed through the damn wires again. He pulls his body out from under the car and throws the wrench across the garage. Sure, he could just leave and find some more wires. And oil and gas. But he hasn’t left this cabin since he got here. He saw the news reports before the TV stations went off the air, he knew it was only worse after all these years. He’s not sure how many years have passed, he knows at least two winters. Only because the first one it snowed black ash along with the snow and last winter was the coldest one yet. Even his bones were frozen.

He stands up and strips off his jumpsuit before leaving the garage. He doesn’t care about making a mess in the cabin, but he does it out of respect for the person who used to live here. The person who had a knit blanket on the back of the couch, probably because his wife made it for him. The guy who had a beer bottle opener installed in the wood frame of the kitchen doorway. The guy who had a great collection of anime porn comics. He didn’t even know they made print anime porn.

Dean Winchester makes his way to the couch and plops down, staring at the ceiling. He probably has another hour until sundown. He has to wait until sundown. And he has to make tonight count because it’s his last one. After this there is no more. He did such a good job at rationing it out, such a good job at not cheating. It’s even harder for him to control his impulses since he died. Died, he huffs. Sure doesn’t feel dead. He wishes he were. He begged Crowley relentlessly to kill him, but something about the Mark made it impossible to die. Until he gives the Mark to another, he’s stuck in this body, mostly demon, until there is nothing left. He wasn’t about to give the Mark to anyone else, nobody else deserved this hell. 

Only he did.

Dean looks over to the table and sees the summoning gear still there from six months ago, covered in a fine layer of dust. Since he doesn’t have to eat, he doesn’t. He doesn’t have to take a leak or eat or any of that human stuff, so he doesn’t. He knows the world is hell and he hasn’t left this place for anything. Last time, Crowley brought him the car as some sort of bribe to join him as second-in-command. 

He sits up on the couch and grabs a small wooden box from the coffee table. He puts it in his lap, not entirely sure if he wants to open it. He knows exactly what’s inside the box, a nametag that says “Steve.” After Castiel threw it off Dean went back and picked it up. He never really understood why he carried it around, but he never felt right throwing it away either. It’s the only object he has to remind him of the angel, and yet he never looked at it. He always held the box, contemplated the contents, but he can’t remember the last time he actually looked at it. He sets the box back on the coffee table.

Mementos were stupid.

He lays back down and stares at the ceiling again. In the beginning he tried to sleep because it was what he always did, got his four hours. But all he saw were images he wanted to forget. He could hear those damned hellhounds screaming away and see Castiel’s face and Sam’s tears and he just couldn’t take it anymore. So for however long this has been going on, he’s been staring at the ceiling. He knows he could distract himself. Just because he doesn’t need to eat doesn’t mean he can’t. He could go hunting for a deer, or try to find a new place to live. The only being on the planet, heaven or hell who knows he is here is Crowley and honestly he wouldn’t mind losing him. At least Cain had his bees.

Cas loved bees. He wanted to keep bees too. Once while they were in the impala, Dean noticed that Castiel had captured a bee in his palm at some point during the trip and was watching it climb on his hand with the kind of wonder toddlers have watching Teletubbies. There were a lot of things Cas wanted to do with Dean that he wishes he would have done. Play Twister. Finish Sorry. Sit him down and show him movies and explain why they are the best things ever. Dean wanted to apologize for every single thing he did wrong and all the right things he didn’t do. Dean wanted to admit it out loud how much Castiel meant to him, even if he doesn’t really know what that means. He wanted to thank him for giving up an entire faction for him. Dean wanted to forgive him. And himself.

This is what the Anniversary always did to him. All the thoughts he manages to keep at bay on a daily basis come flooding back all at once and it nearly breaks him. Last year he went to the lake behind the cabin and walked into the very middle of it. Sitting there on the bottom of the lake, watching the fish swim through the nearly black murky water, he waited for almost a week down there. Waiting to die, knowing full well he wouldn’t. He should have stayed there.

Dean watches the sun set and remembers the fish, the rocks, the old rusted bumper. He remembers as he floated towards the surface, how as he went up and up the water acted like a prism, catching and throwing colors of light into the murky depths. It was so beautiful.

Finally the sun is down. Dean nearly jumps off the couch and over to the fridge. Seemed as good as any place to keep it. Crowley gave it to him as a gift, said it was given to him as a deal and that everybody’s favorite angel had decided to ditch the wings for good. The only way he could conceptualize how that bit of information made him feel was that it broke his heart. He doesn’t care how that may sound to anyone else, but it what it is.

Dean doesn’t open the small plastic container until he’s back on the couch. He wanted nothing to interfere with the feelings he’s about to have, and that includes walking. It’s such a euphoric high for the first day, all the love and peace. He even smells him. It’s like Cas is wrapping him in a giant hug that will never break. He gets comfortable and opens the small plastic box. He pulls out the syringe containing the very last small bit of Castiel’s grace.

For this last time, he plunges the needle directly into his heart.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings, kinks and contents: Mayhem, lots of non-named character death. Warning for murder of children. Also suicide warning, Dean is seriously done living so if that’s a trigger…
> 
> Summary: Frustrated that he can’t die, Dean finally decides to make a move. Sam and Castiel deal with an attack at their camp that changes their world again.

Three nights later…

Sam smelled smoke before he even opened his eyes. For a moment, he thought perhaps someone was starting the morning cooking fire, but when he heard the screaming and yelling he knew it was a full out attack. Croatoans didn’t start fires, demons did. The camp was under attack.

Sam jolted off his ancient mattress and began pulling his jeans and boots on. By the time he was clothed and had his bug out pack on, Cas appeared in his doorway, his own bag secure and a rifle in his hand. “Sam.”

Sam quickly grabs the demon blade and slings his rifle into the handmade strap on his pack. Both packs contained extra rock salt, a few cans of food and an opener, matches, first aid supplies, string for snares and a few other odds and ends. “If we get split up…”

“I know,” Cas nods, leading Sam out of the house. “Meet under the overpass near the old school.”

“If I’m not there in twenty four hours…”

“Assume you are dead and continue on without you.”

Both men pause when they look out over the camp and see the mayhem. The snow is falling in fat flakes and has been falling long enough to cover the grass. There is a body on the road in front of their house, blood seeping into the snow. Sam steels his jaw and runs past the body and towards the main gate. It’s a very small camp, only about the size of a city block, and it’s all barricaded by old buses, trucks, and fences. He hears a woman screaming and ducks behind an old car. He sees two men, not men, demons, dragging her into the street. As Sam grabs his blade and prepares to ambush them, they slit her throat with rusty metal. He runs towards them, screaming and yelling. He manages to take them both out, but not before the woman dies in the front yard of an old, dilapidated house.

Sam continues to run to the main gate, surprisingly not being seen. He approaches two men, Tanner and Sean, who are loading water guns with holy water. Not enough to stop them, but enough to slow the demons down or force them into a devil’s trap. “What happened?”

“There was a hole in the hose over behind the brick house,” Sean replied. The entire camp was surrounded by old garden hoses filled with salt---it kept the salt from washing away in the rain or moving with the wind. “Looked like a rabbit chewed a hole in it. I managed to repair the hole but not before a bunch got in. Tanner took out one, I took out two.”

“I got two,” Sam replies.

“I saw a group of four of them moving down the alley towards your place, but I knew that if any of them were in…” Tanner starts.

“…that they’d try to open this front gate to flood the place.” Sam finishes. “Cas went that way.”

“Chris and Luke,” Sean replies. 

Sam begins to panic. “Stay on the gate, make sure those traps are not broken. I have to go help Cas. He has no idea four demons are headed his way.”

Sam hears the men applying spray paint to the road in front of the gate—repairing devil’s traps before the snow made it too difficult---as he ran towards Laura’s place. He nearly slipped in the wet snow but he knows that if Cas dies, he lets Dean down.

Sam turns the corner and sees smoke billowing out of Laura’s house. Laura is crumpled in the front yard holding Chris in her arms. The boy is coughing and they are both covered in melted snow and smoke. He kneels down next to them. “Where’s Cas?”

“In the house, I couldn’t find Luke…” Laura sobs. 

Sam leaves them and runs into the house. The first floor is filling with black smoke. Fires are not like they are in the movies. There is no bright flame keeping the way well lit. The smoke turns the air black and all you can hear is whooshing and snapping as the house falls apart. Sam screams out Cas’s name but he can barely hear himself, he knows Cas won’t hear him. He’s been in this house before making repairs, he knows the kids’ room is towards the back, through the kitchen. If he can make it past any demons lurking inside he can get to Cas and Luke.

Sam hears the first demon thudding his heavy feet down the hall towards his very quickly. The steps are too heavy to be Cas and too quick to be human under these conditions. Charging towards the demon, Sam thrusts his knife into the body before him, which only becomes visible when the orange light glows as it dies. Pushing the body to the side, Sam continues to move through the hallway until he gets to the kitchen. Sam can see slight whispers of flame coming from the wood stove in the corner, but not enough to be the source of the fire. This wasn’t an accident, the demons did this. There’s three left in here and Cas has a kid.

Sam hears coughing and turns around. “CAS?”

“SAM?” Castiel appears from the dark smoke carrying Luke. Sam is close enough to hug him and can barely see him. “I HAVE TO GET HIM OUT OF HERE, HE ISN’T BREATHING.”

Sam hears the demon rushing up behind Cas and quickly pushes him out of the way, thrusting the knife up inside the body and being met with the flashing glow. He turns around and pushes Cas back towards the front door. The men manage to make it out the front door, coughing and gagging, when they are met by a demon holding a knife to Christopher’s neck, and his mother Laura dead on the ground and bleeding into the snow.

The demon smiles as he cuts the boys throat.

Sam screams and runs to the demon, jumping onto the teenage boy body it possesses and stabbing the demon knife deep into his neck. He turns around to see Cas kneeling in the snow next to the sooty body of Luke. “I can’t, he won’t breathe,” Cas says panicked.

Sam hands the blade to Cas and begins chest compressions---he took a CPR course once in high school for an easy gym credit. It’s only when he begins to push against his chest that he sees the blood seeping from his blackened clothes. He lifts the boy’s shirt to reveal a horrific stab wound, jagged, mean and not caused by a regular blade. The bastard demon stabbed the boy in his sleep with whatever was nearby. He was probably dead before Cas found him. Sam can hear cries and screams from throughout the camp. He hears an explosion down the block but doesn’t look up. There must be dozens of demons in the camp by now. Many more are probably dead. Maybe they will all be dead by morning.  
Cas puts his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “We have to go help, we’ll come back to bury them.”

Sam sets the boy in the snow next to his mother, swallows down the loss and stands, following Cas back towards the front gate. They get past their house when Sam finally sees the source of the explosion---the town center. All the food stores are up in flames, save for the bug out bags. Sam sees people he doesn’t know—demons—running into buildings and starting fires. He sees Sean ahead but he’s too far away. The man is holding his arm and bleeding from the face. A demon gets him from behind. He hadn’t realized he stopped moving until Cas grabbed his arm and began pulling him towards the back of the compound.

~

Dean closes his eyes. The grace is wearing off and he wants to remember how this feels. It’s all he has left. He breathes in deeply and pictures Cas and Sam. They are drinking beers at a bar, Cas pretending to be FBI just like them. Then they are back at the bunker, watching something on TV and laughing whenever Cas doesn’t get a reference. He remembers singing along to the radio with Sam. He remembers wrestling and fighting and pranking. He remembers sending Castiel on his date when he was a human. He remembers the way both of the men sound and smell and feel. He remembers the loss. He’s supposed to remember the good, relish in the euphoria of feeling closer to human with Cas’s grace flowing through his veins, competing with the smoke until eventually it runs out.

He didn’t think demons could weep but he does. 

“Well well well,” Crowley’s voice carries from the corner where he instantly appeared. “I brought you some pornography. I would have brought you internet but…that’s kinda gone now.”

Dean opens his eyes and finds himself charging Crowley, pinning him against the wall. “Get the fuck out.”

“But my dear,” Crowley looks down at Dean’s chest and reads the nametag, “Steve. I came with an offer.”

“Fuck you and your offer,” Dean lets Crowley go and moves towards the coffee table, removing Cas’ nametag and placing it back gently in the box. “You have nothing I want.”

“I know where the moose and the bird are.”

“I don’t want to know. They shouldn’t know I’m alive. To them I’m dead.”

“Now now my boy, I’ve been doing some research and I think there may be a way for us to both be happy.” Crowley sighs and snaps his fingers to put a bottle of whiskey and two glasses on the table. 

“I have it on good authority that War has been causing some major problems down in town.”

“So?” Dean pours himself a triple, leaving Crowley’s glass empty.

“So,” Crowley rolls his eyes and pours himself a drink. “They’ve started the town on fire. In about six hours this cabin will be nothing but rubble. Meaning that unless you want to burn…”

“What do you want?”

Crowley sighs. “What I’ve always wanted, to swim naked in the fires of hell with you.”

“You want me to take over for Alistair? You want a puppy to do all your dirty work? I’m not doing it.” Dean sighs. “At this point I just need to find the demon knife or the First Blade.”

“For a little wrist slitting?” Crowley rolls his eyes. “You’re already dead. News flash sugar tits, the First Blade is the only thing that will take you out. See, that trendy little Mark of Cain made you an automatic knight. Demon blade will sting but not pushing up daisies.”

Dean wordlessly and effortlessly flips the coffee table over, sending the name tag skittering out of the box and across the floor. That stupid name tag. If he hadn’t caved in and taken it out of the box he might have held it together. He could pretend that his grace wasn’t gone, he could have felt happy with it inside of him. Now all he can think of is that the slight tingle of joy under his skin is the last that he will ever have.

“You could just go find them,” Crowley said. “Granted, my black eyes are trying to kill them, but…”

“Fuck you,” Dean spits. He bends down and picks up the name tag. “Hands off.”

“Look, I adore the Moose and Big Bird but if they…”

“Hands off.” Dean glares, letting his black eyes show.

“I’ll order my boys to leave yours alone, but only if you take a trip with me. Just one little trip. Spend one hour with me. You don’t like it, you come back here to your…cabin…or what’s left of it.” Crowley sighs. “Don’t make me beg.”

Dean gingerly places the name tag in its box and sets it on the mantel above the fireplace. Sam and Cas could be in real danger if things are as bad as Crowley has been hinting at. If the Horsemen are out roaming again it must mean some idiot opened the gates of hell again. Dean wonders for a moment if it was Sam, looking for a way to bring him back to life. Because Sam thinks he’s dead. He has to think that, he has to think that he just hallucinated Dean talking to Crowley in the bunker after his death. 

“No fucking way, I’ll do it myself.” Dean turns back to face him. “Beg all you want.”

Dean grabs the box containing the name tag and storms out of the cabin. He smells the smoke as he begins to walk down the dirt road. He knows as a knight, he could just blink or snap or whatever and end up in Wisconsin, but he needs to walk right now. He needs to keep moving because otherwise he’d kill Crowley. Well, he can’t really kill him, but he needs to keep stringing Crowley along because Crowley may be the only one who can kill him. He’s the only one who has the First Blade, and that’s the only thing that can kill him.

Dean hears cars honking and crashing on the county road leading out of town up ahead. He hears yelling, then screaming. He can smell the blood before he can see it. Breaking out of the tree line and onto the side of the road he sees people killing people. Remembering his own encounter with War, he knows they all think the other is a demon. Some are cowering inside locked vehicles while others are running in between them, shooting or dying. Dean feels the concussion of a vehicle exploding up the road. Wait, no. Someone shot him. Regular birdshot. He looks down at his shirt, annoyed at all the holes the pellets left behind.

He’s got to protect Sam and Cas from the demons and figure out how to get Crowley to give up the First Blade. He hid long enough and it didn’t get him any closer to putting an end to everything. So he uses his Knight of Hell powers and slams the offending human against a car just enough to knock the son of a bitch out. He makes his way down the road, tossing people in the ditch and ignoring the demons who notice him and smile as they kill as if they are trying to please their new knight.

~

Castiel adds another log to the fire. He decided that keeping warm in the snow was more important than hiding from the demons. He looks over to Sam, who has been sleeping all day. They barely made it to the rendevouz point before Sam collapsed. Cas couldn’t discern any particular injury on the man and assumed exhaustion from not recouperating from his supply mission before the demons destroyed the camp.

He looks through the trees to where he dragged Hank and Debbie’s bodies, not having enough energy yet to bury them properly. They were both here when Castiel and Sam arrived, but they had both been cut and stabbed very badly and died before sunrise. Nobody else had made it here, which means nobody else survived the raid. This is the third raid of a camp Sam and himself had been through. The third raid where they were the only two left. He had to wonder if there was a reason they were being spared, or if it really was hard work and luck. Not that he believed in that.

The can of peas he put on the edge of the fire were starting to smell very good. Using a spare shirt from his pack as a potholder, he gently removes the can from the fire to cool. He looks over to Sam, who looks surprisingly comfortable. Castiel was able to set up his bedroll and maneuver the man onto it so he wasn’t sleeping on the wet snow. The snow stopped shortly after they made the point, but Castiel had spread his own metallic fire blanket over Sam as he stayed up to keep watch for other survivors.

“That smells amazing,” Sam says softly, eyes still closed. “Cas?”

“I’m here, Sam.” He smiles a bit to himself, feeling less alone. “Are you alright?”

Sam finally opens his eyes and sits up. “Yeah. Hey, where are they?”

Castiel looks down at the can of peas. “In the woods. They died while you were asleep. There was nothing that could be done.”

Sam takes a deep breath. “Water?”

Castiel reaches down and hands Sam a canteen. “Melted and filtered snow, I figured we could save our bottles. There was only about an inch of snow that fell last night and it’s fairly warm, I don’t think there will be much left by sundown.”

Sam takes a drink and looks at the ground, nodding. “Right. Good thinking.” He hands the canteen back to Castiel. “So, where to?”

Cas hands the now cool can of peas to Sam, who starts to pour them into his mouth like drinking coffee from a mug. “We could go south.”

Sam swallows his mouthful and passes the can to Cas, who inhales his own bite. “We go south, it’s a dustbowl. No way to grow anything or get much in the way of water. Famine took care of that. We have to stay as north as we can.”

Cas passes the peas back to Sam. “What if we went towards the Rocky Mountain region? Last we heard, Famine left most of that region to War.”

“Everyone will have killed each other off, but the land should be mostly untouched. Alright, we need to find ourselves some transport.”

“Horses?”

Sam laughs. “We haven’t seen horses in a year. All the ones that were broke have either been stolen by demons, let go because it was too much work to feed them, or outright killed for food.”

“A pair of bicycles?” Cas asks with a hint of a smile.

Sam sighs. “If that’s all we can find.”

The men inhale the rest of the can of peas in relative silence. Sam offers to keep watch and let Castiel get some sleep. He cannot dig a grave for Hank or Debbie without a shovel, but he does manage to find enough rocks and pine bows to cover their bodies out of respect. Only Hank managed to grab his bug out bag, so Sam spends time repacking the supplies between his pack and Castiel’s.

He’s started over too many times.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ***SUICIDE TRIGGER WARNING***
> 
> Dean misses a lot of things, which is strange because demons shouldn’t feel. Sam and Castiel have carved out a life in the woods, but Cas has second thoughts about their situation.
> 
> Also, for those of you wondering why Sam thinks Dean is dead (ie didn't realize his body was missing) we will get to that.

Dean misses pie. He doesn’t miss getting tired, he doesn’t miss sleep or even whiskey right now. He misses pie. Every diner and Gas n Sip he’s passed has either been looted, burned down, or the food was covered in mold. Dean has been walking for days, or weeks. He can’t remember. He could have stopped and taken a break, found some alcohol and changed his clothes. Dean only stops when he wears a hole in the sole of a shoe, usually taking one off a corpse or breaking into the nearest empty house to find something wearable. 

He hasn’t seen a human being since the second day he was out on the road. Just dead bodies covered in flies, and the occasional demon traveling through, nodding to Dean in some strange sort of recognition. All but one have had dead hosts and completely taken over the meat suits. He can smell it. One demon had kept his host alive. Dean could hear him screaming for help in his head. It was a deliciousness that coursed through his body and set his skin on fire in pleasure. It scared him, but he liked it. Like he liked torturing people in hell. He nearly groaned in pain when the demon and his vessel were finally too far away to hear. He wanted more screams, more pain. Dean wanted to feel hot tears under his fingertips mingle with bright red blood.

That’s when he realized that the only way they could stay together was to convert Sam and Castiel. Turn them into demons. But it was much more than possessing them. If they were, they would lose their souls into the blackness. No, they’d have to become Knights of Hell just as he was. But if he gave his Mark of Cain away, he might lose himself. Before Dean found Sam and Cas, he needed to find out how to convert them, preferably in a way that didn’t involve Crowley. The idea that they could finally stop chasing down bad things. They wouldn’t have to be demons in practice, they could just wander and roam. Find a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Use their powers to watch TV and movies and just let the end of the world happen outside the door.

Dean passes a liquor store and smirks. He remembers when Castiel “found a liquor store and drank it.” He could walk right up to that liquor store and drink its full inventory and not feel any of it. Diverting from his mission, he walks right up through the broken door. All the shelves are bare. Strange what human will grab when the whole world is falling apart, though he couldn’t blame them for wanting to dull their final moments. Dean searches behind the counter and finds two flask-shaped bottles of gin. Gin of all things. Ah well, alcohol is alcohol. He pockets one and opens the other, chugging its entire contents in one go. Sauntering out of the store, he tosses the empty bottle on the ground behind him and listens to the glass shatter on the cracked pavement.

There would be no more running from his feelings for Castiel either.

~

“I think your beard is longer than your hair now,” Cas mutters. “Perhaps you should consider braiding it.”

Sam grabs some snow and throws it at him. “Dick.”

Castiel finishes filling his two buckets with snow and stands. “Let get these on the fire. I’m very thirsty.”

“And you stink. I stink,” Sam replies. “And a sponge bath is still a bath. We still have half a bar of soap left too.”

“I cannot wait until spring when I can properly wash my hair. The things I miss, cleaning myself up with a snap.” Cas says quietly.

Sam grabs his two buckets of snow and follows Cas back towards their meager camp. They found a shed in the middle of the woods two weeks back and managed to patch the holes in the roof with what little supplies they have picked up along the way. Sam fixed the wood stove inside to keep them warm at night, while Castiel fashioned an outdoor smoke tent and fire pit for boiling down snow. The shed was small, and their bedrolls were side by side. It felt good to have someone literally right by his side. It helped him to forget how much it hurt not having Dean there.

Sam hands the buckets off to Cas and steps inside the shed. Sitting on an upside down plastic pail, he hangs his gloves above the wood stove to dry out. Opening the door to put another log on, he looks into the flames and closes his eyes.

The heat of the flames is replaced by heat from the sun. Opening his eyes, he sees himself in the desert. The ground was dry and cracked, the haze shimmering on the horizon. There were mountains in the distance and he couldn’t tell if the hills were on fire or if it was the haze. Everything smelled like death. He heard a crack so loud it felt like the earth broke in half behind him and when he turned around, Sam saw Dean running towards Castiel with an axe in his hands. He shouted for Cas to move but he stood still, staring down Dean. Dean’s eyes turned black as he swung at Cas.

“SAM?”

Sam jolted from his vision at the sound of Cas’s voice. “Yeah, yeah?”

“Another vision?” Cas puts his hand to Sam’s shoulder.

He nods swiftly, standing up. “After that bear wandered close last night I didn’t sleep well.”

“Is there anything I need to know?” Cas looks at him with concern.

“No. I’m going to try hunting, our meat is almost done smoking so we’ll have room for more, we could use those jars we found in town last week. Maybe I’ll find whatever is left from that bear’s meal, we can smoke it and it will be safe.”

Cas lets Sam go without an argument. Sam began having his visions again not long after Dean died. After they had set up that camp and were living in a real community, they went away for a while. Occasionally he would have a vision of a person walking scared and hurt through the woods and he’d go off and find them, bring them back to the camp. But a few days after the camp burned down, he had a vision of this shed. Took them three weeks to get here between bicycles and even an old truck that miraculously had a full tank of gas, but it was here. It was a two day trek to the nearest town which they had already raided for whatever scraps were left. St. Louis was only sixty miles out but they avoided it—too populated. Here it was safe, warm enough, and there was nothing drawing demons or Croatoans near. Except maybe the smoke from the fires but most demons couldn’t be bothered to chase down such a small fire.

He grabs the crossbow and quiver from the side of the shed and sets off to the west, following the bear tracks. It was a small bear, he might be able to take it down with an arrow if he hits it just right. Then again he gutted a hellhound in hand-to-hand combat and that fucker was invisible. He might just go after a black bear with a buck knife. They’ve been smoking rabbit and venison for the past week and they did have rice and a few canned goods. Cas knew how to smoke meat into jerky so it didn’t need go bad for months and they had a good two months of meat already but Sam wanted a steak. Hunting out here was almost fun because there were more animals here than in Wisconsin. There were also less infected and demons. In his hunting trips in the past four weeks they’ve been here he’s brought back at least a single rabbit each time. 

Sam tracks the bear tracks in the snow---quite a bit of snow for this area but between climate change and the Apocalypse, he’s not surprised. Walking through the snow is tiring, and he can feel the cold seep in through his left boot, but the plastic bags he wraps his feet in keep him dry. He hasn’t been able to find boots that fit him. Perhaps it’s time to make a trip to St. Louis. There are so many things they need they could get there, but the risk is too great. They’d have to find a truck, and gas, to haul everything and make it worth while.

He’s broken from his thoughts by a pile of scat in the middle of the trail. He holds his bare hand over the pile, which is giving off heat. Standing, he kicks at it with his shoe. It doesn’t move in a big lump, but rather messes up the toe of his shoe. Wiping his shoe in the snow, he smirks to himself. The bear must be close, stuck around because he could smell the meat in the smoke house. Sam’s mouth starts to water as he hears a twig snap in the woods to his right.

He knows that his vision was just a dream, this one could never be. They are in Illinois, far from the desert. Dean is dead. There’s very little Cas could ever do to warrant Dean’s actions in the first place—even when he was carrying the Leviathins Dean struggled with his choice to kill Cas if that’s what things came down to. But now Dean’s gone. Dean’s gone and Sam can’t bring him back. Sam has lost so many people, so much of his family. Castiel is the only one he has left. It’s only a matter of time know before Sam loses him too and he has no idea what he can do to save him. The thought is crippling, it knocks him on his knees and steals his breath.

He’s so busy gasping for breath that he doesn’t notice the bear until it starts to growl and grunt.

~

He fixes the hole in one of the two pairs of boxer shorts Sam owns and puts the garment back in Sam’s bag. Cas puts another log in the woodstove and goes out to the smokehouse to begin packing what meat is done. Once inside, he pulls the boxes of freezer bags they scavenged and begins to grab chunks of smoked jerky meat, filling gallon sized bags and setting them in a basket on the ground. It smells good when they smoke it this way. Reminds him of the time he had a smoked barbeque burger at a dive bar outside of Kansas with Sam and Dean.

He swallows at the thought of Dean. Sam is the one having visions but that doesn’t mean that Castiel doesn’t see Dean whenever he closes his eyes. It’s harder now, just the two of them. There’s less work to keep their days occupied. Less people to socialize with. More time to remember all the things that living people these days tried to forget. Sometimes he forced himself to remember the smoke as the camp burned, leaving three dead bodies on their front law and running. Anything to avoid thinking about Dean because he knows that out of all the heartbreaking events of his human life, that one shattered him completely.

Castiel reaches down to finger the handle of the knife slung to his hip. He thinks about it when he thinks about Dean. The pain in unbearable. He can’t behind his grace, he can’t heal himself anymore. Not that he could heal emotional pain, but he could use the grace to dull it away. Back at camp they had a few bottles of liquor here or there that people would pull out when they had a good hunt or a birthday. No such luck here in the shed. All they have are two pairs of boxers, an extra t-shirt and this stupid fucking smoke tent full of game. They had no backup, no Dean and Castiel certainly had no hope.

He slumps to his knees in the cold dirt and takes out the blade. It’s sharp—they always sharpened their knives. It wasn’t a demon blade, but when he dipped it in holy water it packed a punch and slowed them down. Although it has killed more rabbits and Croatoans than anything else. Game and humans. What’s one more? He’s not even fighting anymore, he’s completely given up and he’s hiding in a shed in the middle of the woods just trying not die. He closes his eyes and sees Dean smile at him, smells Dean’s scent when he gets a little too close. He recalls the times he looked over Dean invisibly, even that one time in the shower when he let his eyes linger a little too long and a little too low. Knowing that he’ll never see any of that again pulls a wracking sob from his chest.

It’s going to be easy, he thinks, as he pulls up his sleeve. It won’t hurt, he’ll just slowly pass out from blood loss and fade away. He knows he can’t go to heaven or hell—technically his true soul is gone. Once an angel loses their grace and becomes human, they can die for good. Which is exactly what he wants. He lifts the knife to the pale white wrist and cuts hard and deep. Blood almost sprays from the wound. He fights the instinct to apply pressure and slips off his knees and onto the ground.

“Cas?” Sam’s voice comes from the tree line. 

Sam. He can’t die, he has to take care of Sam. For Dean. Dean’s entire life was about taking care of Sam and now that he’s gone it’s Castiel’s job. Take care of Sam. He drops the knife and grabs his bleeding wrist. “SAM!”

Sam barges into the smoke tent and instantly kneels next to Cas, grabbing his wrist with both hands. “What happened?”

“The knife..it slipped…” he lies. “I was trying to cut down the meat.”

“Fuck,” Sam squeezes down harder. “Can you walk into the shed? We’ve got a first aid kit in there.”

Cas nods weakly as Sam helps him stand and practically carries him to his bedroll.

~

Sam comes back into the shed with two huge bear meat steaks, medium rare. He sets one plate near the wood stove to keep it warm for Cas and he sits on the upturned bucket and begins to cut away at his. Cas lost a decent amount of blood and after they slowed the bleeding and used the tiny bit of rum they had left to clean it, he passed out while Sam was stitching him up. He was cut deep, Sam wishes he had better tools to actually stitch the vein closed. But he hopes a huge meal of red meat and a few days rest should help his bone marrow make more blood.

He takes a big bite and nearly groans in pleasure, having used some salt to season the meat. They’ve gotten into a pattern of smoking all their game to make it last, and quite frankly he was sick of rabbit, pheasant and venison. Bear was amazing. Better than sex. Well, a decent enough replacement. Tonight he’ll take it. Maybe Cas will stay passed out long enough for him to rub one out and then he can pretend it’s fucking Christmas or something.

Sam supposed it would happen sooner or later. One of them would attempt it. If Sam hadn’t shown up to ask Cas for help carrying the bear he may have succeeded. Castiel had been through so much because of him and Dean. He gave up his sanity, died countless times, set souls free from purgatory and lost his grace for good. He lost Dean. The fact that Dean meant something very important to Cas was never lost on Sam. Hell, the fact that those two used to eye-fuck each other into the floor wasn’t lost on him either, but he knows Dean would have never acted on it, even if he realized it. Castiel fell in love with Dean and now Dean was gone. He had no doubts that Cas cared for him too, but it wasn’t the same. Sam just figured it would have been him dancing with that blade against his wrist first. Maybe Cas was ashamed, or scared. Maybe Cas changed his mind.  
Sam’s glad he found Castiel in time. He’s glad they have each other. His other brother, the last one left. He won’t fail him like he failed Adam or Dean.

Sam pauses chewing to take a big swig of melted snow—fuck water tasted so good—when Cas stirred awake. The man smiles when he sees the plate near the stove and Sam reaches over to hand it to him. “I shot that bear. Two arrows. I would have missed him but I got the second arrow right in his eye. I packed a couple more steaks in a bucket of snow and hung it up in a tree, we can smoke the rest in the morning. No knives for you.”

Cas takes the plate and sits up slowly, noticing Sam cubed his meat for him. “Thank you.”

“You gotta stay hydrated,” Sam tosses an old canteen filled with melted snow water at his feet.

“Thank you,” Cas says, “for finding me.”

Sam swallows down more than just a bite of bear. “Promise me you won’t be so careless with the knives again. I…I need you.”

Cas smiles painfully at his new brother. “I’m sorry, I’ll be careful.”

~

Dean finally stops long enough to pull some cowboy boots off a corpse in a mini-van on the side of the road. He looks down at his feet and smiles. Damn, why did I never wear these things before? I got swagger, he muses. That’s when he hears it, a whimper. It’s faint and muffled, but he hears it. It’s coming from the back of the mini-van. Walking around the back, he pops open the hatch and starts pulling out bags and blankets and family photo albums, letting the pictures scatter on the roadway.  
He sees her matted red hair before he sees her eyes. She can’t be more than seven years old. Judging from the small cavern she’s made for herself back there, she was living in the back of that van for at least a week. The man was only dead a day, probably her father. This girl was dead in the water. He smells her tears before they start to fall. She cries quietly and begs on a whisper “help me.”

Her fear tastes delicious. He lets his eyes go black and grabs her. She is screaming and kicking against him but he doesn’t flinch. Her mortal fear makes his blood rush through dead veins, makes him want to literally howl with pleasure. This girl in his arms fighting for her life is better than a thousand slices of pie, the best lay he’s ever had. It’s better than remembering Sam’s smile or Castiel’s bright blue eyes.

No, no it’s not.

Dean wants to feel tears running down his face but he knows they won’t. Fuck, demons don’t cry. Demons don’t have emotions, certainly not Knights of Hell. He swallows a big gulp of air, struck at how caught he is between wanting to bathe in this child’s blood and wanting to be himself again. Wanting to save Sam and Cas from everything. Be with them again, joke with Sam, hold Cas close like he should have a long ass time ago.

He sets the girl down. “It’s not safe here.”

Dean doesn’t know what else to do but let her run into the woods.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings, kinks and contents: Masturbation, dubious consent (basically Dean thinking it’s okay to enjoy the torture of others as long as he’s not the one doing it)
> 
>  
> 
> Summary: Sam makes plans for Christmas while Castiel remembers Dean when he was happy. Dean continues on his trek to find them and fix everything.

Cas winces when Sam removes the bandage from his wrist. It’s been two weeks but the cut was very deep and Cas tore the makeshift stitches open twice working around their homestead. Sam has been vigilant in helping him clean and dress the wound daily, although they are now out of clean dressings from the first aid kit they had found and have been using tears of cloth washed with boiled snow.

“This looks much better,” Sam says, pouring boiled and cooled water over the wound. “The redness around it is gone, those antibiotics I found must have tackled that infection. The skin has finally healed enough I can take out the stitches.”

Cas just swallows the lump in his throat and nods. The pink budding flesh sealing the cut closed is puckered around several knots of black acrylic thread. One side has thicker scarring than the other, due to the tears, but considering what little he had to work with Sam did an exemplary job. If only he hadn’t forgotten his duty in the first place. He’ll always have a scar to remind him.

“Hey,” Sam says, removing the first stitch with a small knife. “You know what’s coming up soon?”

Cas takes a deep breath and watches the next stitch leave his body. “From the look of the sky this morning, more snow.”

Sam smiles. “Christmas, Cas. Christmas is in about two weeks by my count.”

“The birth of Christ. You are aware that Jesus did not exist but rather was an amalgamation of random acts of kindness and stories of wonder perpetrated by hundreds of individuals mixed with a flair for the dramatic. God suspected it would be easier to swallow if it was one man, so he asked Metatron to invent Jesus Christ.”

Sam bristles at the name of the, thing, that killed his brother, but he keeps working. “So why December 25th?”

“Pagan, based on the solstice. Christians and Catholics were thieves, stealing from the pagans in the name of God. Father hated it. I think that’s the first time he started to grow disillusioned with the planet. Raphael saw it. Balthazar too.” Cas frowns at the memory, the loss of his brothers. Balthazar was one of his favorite of his family, annoying as he was. “I personally enjoy all the lights.”

“I was thinking maybe we should do something special. Fun.”

“We can’t exactly go to the movies,” Cas mutters. Watching the stitches leave his wrist and Sam wraps a new bandage around it. He flexes his fingers, stiff from holding so still.  
“I was thinking we go into St. Louis. We could spend some time there, if it’s safe. Get supplies, maybe find an abandoned bowling alley. Oh, a pool hall.” Sam stands up. “Of course if the place is crawling with demons or Croatoans…”

“Should we even take the risk?” Cas looks up at Sam, suddenly struck with a need to giggle at his height.

“We don’t have any first aid supplies left. All we have for food is meat, which is great if you want to get scurvy. How many people are going to think to loot vitamins, there’s gotta be some there in a huge city. Hell maybe we could get ourselves some real pillows, hell even a mattress if we found a truck.”

Castiel wants to tell Sam it’s too dangerous, that they could go somewhere else instead. But he knows that Sam is right, they are out of nearly everything but meat and snow. The way Sam’s face lights up talking about pool and pillows makes Can feel warm inside. He wants Sam to be happy, even if it’s only for a moment. They are brothers now, it’s his job to give Sam the world. What’s left of it.

“We need maps, and a vehicle to bring things back. It’s too dangerous a trip to go only with what we can carry.” Castiel smiles. “I also need to know what you want for Christmas.”

Sam hugs him. Sam hold him tight to his chest and hugs him. At first it’s alarming, strange, new. But then Cas hugs back, feeling the warmth and caring emanate from Sam and it’s almost too overwhelming. They part and he notices that Sam’s eyes are glossy with extra tears. “I’ll make a run to that truck stop, I know they had a whole rack of maps last time and I highly doubt anyone has been there since I was. We can plan out our trip and potential escape plans, take no more than a couple of days in the city.” Sam grabs his pack. “I’ll be back by sundown.”

Cas waits until Sam leaves before moving over to his bedroll. The two layers of old wool blankets does nothing to cushion the plank wood floor beneath them, but at least it keeps him from getting cold at night. He rests his head on a sorry excuse for a pillow—torn clothing beyond repair wadded together—and stares up at the ceiling of the shed. Corrogated metal. He closes his eyes to escape the image and remember the clouds.

Heaven was whatever one wanted it to be for the most part. Angels had little control when they were working, but there were times when they were able to take respite. Most would go to their “rooms” which were nothing but solid white. Some would frequent areas on earth. Castiel preferred to jump through other people’s heavens. He loved watching the man fly a kite in the park the best. It was so carefree, so pure in intention. All the man wanted to do for eternity was fly that kite in that park. The simplicity of that emotion was enough to keep Castiel entranced for hours. He used to marvel at it, wishing and pleading silently for the chance to feel the same. Now he lays here with emotion, but it’s one of pain and sadness and guilt.

Dean’s face comes into his vision. He’s smiling. It was one of the times he was watching Dean long before he went to Hell. He’s in the Impala, Black Sabbath blaring, speeding down a dusty highway. This was a year before John Winchester went missing, a year before Dean went to Stanford for Sam. John is on a case in Arizona and sent Dean to New Mexico to interview a witness. He’s stripped down to a white shirt that Cas now knows is often called a ‘wife beater’ and his denim jeans. The windows are down and the air is moving and he’s still dripping with sweat. Castiel remembers sitting in the backseat, watching his charge sing along off-key and drum his fingers on the steering wheel. Castiel puts this on his list of favorite Dean memories, and it was before he realized he had to get involved. Here Dean is content, happy, has a duty and the confidence to do it.

Something stirs throughout Castiel’s body at the memory. Dean’s tan skin, slightly wet with sweat. It’s glistening on his neck and Cas wants to lean over and taste it on his skin. He remembers that tasting every molecule was a rather unpleasant experience, but he wanted to taste Dean then. Now here on the floor of this shed he wants to taste every single molecule of Dean. He licks his lips at the thought and feels his worn denim jeans tighten just under his belt. 

Castiel quickly undoes his jeans and thrusts a hand inside, palming his growing erection over the stained and threadbare boxers. He always tends to come back to this memory first, the one in the car. Dean’s muscled arms rippling as his fingers tap in time with the drum solo. Castiel licks his lips and darts his mind to another memory. Dean is fresh out of the shower in some random motel while Sam is out. Dean has a towel wrapped around his waist and water drips from his hair down his cheek. Cas feverishly plunges his hand inside of his boxers and tugs at his cock. He’s masturbated before, but not since he lost his grace for good. He finds it slightly disappointing to masturbate as a human because he doesn’t get to feel his grace sing, his wings flutter, his vessel hit resonating frequency at orgasm. But this will do.

The look on Dean’s face after he kissed Meg, giving credit to the “pizza man.” His eyes begged, his hands twitched. Meg tasted like sulfur, but he could have pretended it was Dean. He pretends it’s Dean now. He speeds up his fist and knows he will regret not using any lubricant but for now he doesn’t care. It’s Dean’s skin and Dean’s face and Dean’s scent and his hands and his mouth. Cas wants to taste it all, touch it all. Right now Dean isn’t dead, he’s alive and warm and wet against him. 

His orgasm ripples through him in steady pulses that make his entire body tingle and even pulls a smile from his face. Castiel rolls his head back and slowly lets reality slink its way into his head. Dean is dead. He’s covered in ejaculate and feeling suddenly very depressed. But he fights hard to clean himself off with a random rag and fall asleep with the happy memories of Dean before the dark ones take over.

~

As long as he’s just passing through, it’s okay.

It’s the same logic he used to use for bondage porn. It’s fake, he’s not really tying up women and torturing them, it’s all safe. That’s okay because they are getting paid and they know exactly what’s happening. Now, Dean is walking through Kansas City and he can feel the terror. There are people hiding away inside the buildings around him, watching in fear. They are waiting for him to leave while simultaneously preparing for an attack.

Mommy, is the bad man gone yet? I’m hungry.

Chet, he makes one move towards the building you shoot.

SHIT! Where’s Hank? He’s out scouting for water, where is he?

He bites his lip and feels the fear vibrate in his bones. It’s the most delicious sensation he’s ever experienced. It’s enough for him. He can walk through Minneapolis and St. Paul and have his taste without hurting anyone and move on. He knows he’s still got several days of walking before he gets to Somerset. Even though he feels no physical distress or pain, he’s fucking sick of walking. Once he gets through the city he’s getting a fucking car.

A woman starts to think about her dead boyfriend and trembles in building to his left. The last time Dean felt so dirty he was jerking off to the thought of Cas and spraying his load all over the hood of that rust bucket back at the cabin. Not that he started out thinking about Cas and sex at the same time, but it mingled together in his head and wouldn’t let go. He remembers thinking about sending Cas on that date that wasn’t a date and being a tad bit jealous. He remembers when Cas stayed with them in a motel when he was human, how he walked out of the bathroom completely naked and dripping wet, saying it was illogical for him to get a towel when he could just put his clothes on…

That’s when he smells sulfur. It’s been around him this whole time but he’s learning that every demon has a slightly different scent. This isn’t his, there is another demon close by. Very close. Dean is drawn to follow it but he resists. He merely wants to get his demonic rocks off, maybe find a liquor store with some whiskey left and pretend he can get drunk and has a real plan for turning Sam and Cas. So far his mind travels to Crowley each time, which kills him because then he’ll owe the slimy bastard.

Dean takes a right at the intersection and heads down the ramp towards I94, the straightest path through the area. The sulfur trail continues down the ramp and onto the main highway. He can smell it so strong the taste lingers on the back of his tongue. Close. He feels his hairs stand on end and that pulsing fear touch his synapses. So close. There’s a demon and they’ve got a victim and they are close. Maybe Dean could just hide nearby and let it wash over him. There’s nothing he can do for the person, they are going to be dead anyway. He might as well just let it happen. If he’s getting off on it and not actually doing it, its okay.

It has to be okay because he don’t know if he can keep going without it now.

~

Sam doesn’t mention the smell of semen in the air when he finally gets back. What a man does when he’s alone is his own business. Granted with everything that’s happened, jerking it seems weird, but he has to remember that Cas has very little time under his human belt and he, well, perhaps Sam should stop thinking about it. It’s not right to think about his brother’s…

Sam lets Cas bring him some tea. He actually found some tea. Normally he wouldn’t touch the stuff but tonight it tasted like the greatest thing he’s ever had. Along with some bear jerky and the last bit of kidney beans it was the best dinner he’s ever had.

“We’ll have to find a pickup, which shouldn’t be too hard. The fuel is the other thing.” Sam says in between sips.

“What about horses?” Cas asks.

“Hey if we find them…” Sam digs into his beans. He hated them before. But now he can’t think of anything he wouldn’t eat, except human flesh. “Haven’t we had this conversation before?”

Cas smiles. “Yes I believe we have.”

“This tea is incredible.”

“I’ve always preferred tea to coffee,” Cas remarks. “The Japanese ceremonies are so elegant. Tea pots in Victorian England were so intricate and beautiful.”

“So now I know what you want for Christmas,” Sam laughs.

“What do you want for Christmas?” Cas asks sincerely.

“One year, Dean got me…” his voice cracks and he stops. “I always wanted my own journal. Like Dad’s. I had one once but I only got to write a page or two in it before it got lost in some motel. We were young, Dad made us leave last minute.” Sam clears his throat. “Not like I’ll know what to put in it.”

Cas nods silently and takes another bite of his meal. Sam continues eating, feeling his legs cramp up from the long walk through the wet snow. Wiggle your toes man, he thinks. Stop the cramps before they lay you up for a day. Both men eat quietly, no doubt both thinking of Dean. Sam has been trying to think about it more and more. It’s been four years, it’s time to laugh and smile at the good memories. He knows it’s still painful for Cas, and that his little knife “accident” had something to do with it, but maybe they need to just throw it in the open.

“When we were kids, I think Dean was ten or so, he decided that it would be really funny put my hair in pigtails while I was sleeping.” Sam laughs. “I was so mad at the time but man, I wish we had a camera.”

“Why would that be funny? Girls wear pigtails in their hair all the time.” Cas looks up from his meal. “I think the hairstyle is more about the length of the hair and less about the gender of the person who wears it.”

Sam locks eyes with Cas for three good beats before both men laugh. “I slept with a hat on for months after that,” Sam says. “He was always threatening to cut my hair too.”

“I remember the time that you switched out his beer for a case of the alcohol free kind and laughed while he pretended to get drunk,” Cas remarks.

“Wait,” Sam laughs, “that was before we met you.”

He nods. “Yes, it was. I had been following you two for a while before I made my presence known. I wasn’t supposed to, but after I raised Dean from perdition I didn’t have much of an option.” He smiles again. “You should have seen the look on his face when he stabbed me that first time we met.”

Sam starts to laugh. “That was totally Dean. Stab first and ask questions later.”

Was. Sam strangely feels okay with this now, despite his shaky voice a few moments ago. He needs to put Dean in the past. Castiel doesn’t have experience with human emotions, he’s much more fragile when it comes to loss. Perhaps he should pick up some grief books in St. Louis. He can’t let Cas get back to that point where he tries to kill himself again. Dean would kill Sam if he let anything happen to Cas. Not that he’d ever admit why. He smiles to himself at the memory of all those stolen glances and smirks. The way Dean’s eyes shined when he talked about Cas. Sam had a hard time thinking of his brother as “gay” for Cas, but he cannot really think of what else those two could have had.

“Tomorrow let’s go over the maps, pick out the main routes and rendezvous points. Then we can start preparing our canteens and current weapons stock for the trip. I think in a few days we could be on our way.” Castiel empties is tea mug and reaches for the kettle to pour more.

Reaching his mug out to be topped off, Sam nods. “It’s going to be a long trip, I suppose the sooner we get going the better.”

Castiel just smiles at him and takes another sip of his tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Castiel’s comments on Jesus are based on actual biblical scholar research that supports a theory that Jesus wasn’t a real person, and that acts attributed to him were really from random people throughout history mixed with a bit of hyperbole.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean should have never left the cabin. There, he had his false hope. Crowley finally tells Dean the truth about the fate of the Winchesters, their angel, and all of humanity. Does he truly offer a way to stop the end of the world?
> 
> This is a Dean-only chapter. Sometimes I may have both sides in one chapter, sometime I'll split them up.

Dean lays there and thinks about Sam.

He made it to Somerset but the only thing he found was a burned out “camp”, as evidenced by broken devil’s traps and burned up bodies hiding under multiple layers of melted, frozen, and fresh snow, and this half-standing motel with this one bed not destroyed. The wall is gone and a cold breeze swings through, but it doesn’t bother Dean. What bothers him is that the trail on Sam and Cas went cold. No humans left around here, it’s been quiet in his head for days. He barely made it through the Twin Cities in one piece. He stopped once because he came too close to a gang rape of a human woman by demons and the torturous screams were so good he almost came in his jeans. He didn’t know demons could come, or at least almost come, from just the raw terror emitted by a human. It scared him, but only a little. He knows that should scare him even more, but he’s strangely okay with it.

He took way too long to get here and know Sam could literally be anywhere. In all truth, he’s not even sure Cas is with him, but he hopes so. He reaches up to finger the name tag he’s been wearing since he got here. Cas has to be with Sam, someone has to be taking care of his brother. Dean knows Sam is probably do more caretaking if Cas is with him, but at least he isn’t alone. Dean is surprised that his heart can still break like this. Maybe they made their way to the bunker. Dean doesn’t know if it exists anymore, after all Sam would have had to leave it for a good reason. Maybe he ran out of food. Maybe it was destroyed. Sam probably broke all the devil’s traps and sigils, lured demons in and blew the joint back to hell. A shame, that place had great water pressure.

It’s now, touching this name tag and thinking about Castiel, that Dean regrets ever having thrown the amulet away. He has nothing left from Sam, nothing to cherish. He knows that he’ll have to change Sam without his permission, and that he’ll have to do everything he can to convince Sam not to exorcize himself. Castiel will probably refuse, but their entire relationship has been that way. One of them wants when the other won’t budge. Dean wonders if Castiel ever felt the same way about him as he does now. It’s a lust, a wanting deep in his bones that he feels like will kill him after too much longer. Thinking about those blue eyes, the way they always bore into him in a way that was so violating and yet such a turn on, like Castiel had claimed him and would never let go…so much more satisfying than those screams. But unless he finds a way to fix all that is wrong, the screams will win. He should have never left the cabin.

“Well well well, hello Steve.”

Dean sits up and sees Crowley standing in the open gape of the missing wall. Black suit and jacket immaculate compared to the dusty and wet clothing Dean is wearing. He snaps his fingers, mostly to be a smartass, and is surprised when all this clothing is repaired, clean, just like knew. Well fuck if he would have known he could do that he wouldn’t have stolen shoes off of corpse’s this whole time. He shakes off the feeling of stupidity and stands to meet his guest. “The fuck you want?”

“I see Sam and Castiel have left.”

“You knew they were gone long before I left the cabin.” Dean steels his jaw and really wants to check himself out in a mirror but he doesn’t see one on the room.

“How has your journey been Dean?” Crowley begins to walk around the room, obviously searching for a bar. “I see you were a bit worse for wear.” Not finding a bar, he snaps his fingers and a bottle of whiskey and two glasses appear. “Just figured out that a Knight can use that little trick?” He pours and hands a glass to Dean. “It wouldn’t have worked before, but you’ve been feeding.”

“On what?”

“Human fear. I’m willing to bet you haven’t actually done any howling or raping or pillaging, but you’ve heard screams. You’ve felt others doing it. Great, isn’t it? Human suffering happens every day, it’s such a shame that so much of it goes to waste.” Crowley downs his drink and pours himself another. “You’ll have to keep feeding, and feed first-hand, or that will run out.”

“You don’t feed, you prefer to be alone,” Dean retorts.

“Ah, but I’m the King, my rules are different. Knights of Hell are no good if they aren’t going around a torturing the living, recruiting souls for the pit, blah blah blah.”

“I’m not going to kill innocent people.”

“But you walked by and got off on someone else doing it for you, didn’t you?” Crowley raises an eyebrow. “Not stopping a demon from killing a human makes you just as guilty of murder. Isn’t it all very wonderful?”

“I’m a live and let live kinda guy.”

“You’re not living, Dean.”

He tries not to let the words burn, but they do. The flame grows and spreads through his entire body and before he knows what he’s doing he’s flung Crowley across the room and pinned him up on the ceiling. “THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT.”

“Dean, you’re getting weak, wasting this on me. I can get down, you do realize this.” Crowley stays on the ceiling but even Dean knows he’s right. “Honestly I’ve spent so much time trying to convince you to take your sword, and you seem to be bent on some sort of agenda on your own that neither of us knows what the plot is anymore. So…” Crowley overpowers Dean and gently slides back to the floor, his shiny shoes barely making a noise when he lands. “…what do you say you let me help you.”

“With what?”

“Since I cannot make you human again, you want me to turn Sam. And probably Cas too. Although I’m sure he would rather die. Such a shame, he would make a beautiful demon. So much sex appeal that one. But see, you and I both know that turning them against their will wouldn’t work. Sam would just as soon use the demon blade on himself.”

“I don’t need your help.” Dean scoffs, slumping back onto his dusty bed.

“Lucky for me, you do. For a normal soul, only three of us could have done it. Lucifer wants Sam for himself. And then there’s me. I don’t have the power outright, I’d need a spell. Or two. Some dragon scales. Shouldn’t be too hard to find anymore. However, I can’t overcome his DNA. His powers, even though he doesn’t use them, exist in him on a molecular level. It serves as a lock on his soul—Lucy was only able to disconnect his soul from his body in the cage but he can’t alter it. But even though he doesn’t use his powers, they are embedded in his DNA. Might be hard to overcome them. He may never turn no matter how much you or him wants it.”

He pretends his heart isn’t breaking. “Then how do I die?”

“The First Blade.” Crowley smiles. “But that mark will probably fight you, prevent you from turning it on yourself. Although you are strong enough to overcome it. But good luck finding it.”

“Fuck you.”

“Please?” Crowley smirks. “Tell me it didn’t feel good to hear those screams. Tell me you didn’t almost mess yourself with the pleasure of it all. See Dean, now that you are my Knight it is very hard for you to hide your thoughts from me.”

“Abaddon did it,” he spits.

“She was stronger than you. When you are weak, you let your mental guard down. I’ve been able to read you this entire time. Like some trashy romance paperback, you, Dean, I cannot put down. Let’s go.” Crowley reaches out a hand.

“Where?” Dean stares at the hand, feeling the undeniable pull. It takes all of his being to keep himself from taking the bait.

“I want to show you something.”

Dean stands but doesn’t take the hand. Crowley snaps and in an instant they are in the middle of an old dilapidated building. Smoke smells acrid in Dean’s nose. He hears screaming. He feels it. A woman runs down the hallway towards them, holding a backpack. She doesn’t see them until she is within steps of them. She screams, turning to run back from where she came. Two men dressed in blue stained jumpsuits like one would wear at an auto shop grab her from a doorway on the left side of the hall and pull her in. Dean doesn’t have to see what’s happening to know. She’s fighting and kicking. She drops her backpack and her only weapon, a knife. Not that it would do much good anyway. The men, no, demons, throw her onto the floor. She fights as they tear her jacket away. Screams. Her heart beats so fast it might burst out of her chest.

Dean steadies himself against the wall. He hopes they hurt her now. He hopes they do all the horrible things he spent most of his life trying to stop them from doing. Slowly, he walks towards the room they took her into. He feels his skin sing. He gets to the open door frame, only faintly aware that Crowley hasn’t moved with him. That’s when he looks up and sees what is happening. The demons are stripping the woman naked, not caring that rough fingernails and leaving red lines spattered with small dots of blood. One of the demons licks her collarbone in a dirty, slimy way and Dean shudders. It’s not sexual, but it’s such a violation that the woman gags on her own cries at the shock of it.

This is wrong.

This is disgusting.

You want to throw up.

You want to stop this.

You can’t.

“All humans, any that are left, are going to die.” Crowley appears, standing over Dean, speaking just above a whisper. “Then it’s all over. Might as well enjoy what you can.”

Dean drops the jagged metal and stands to face him. “What do you mean?”

“The apocalypse. It’s all about revenge.” Crowley pockets his hands and eyes the dying woman. “It’s our bacchanal before the swan song. We get to rule earth, take and pillage, plunder our fill of human fear. Then…” he trails off.

“Then what?”

“Lucifer has suffered so much that he’d rather destroy existence than let God put him back in hell. Last time, your brother got him locked up before things went too far. Once humans are gone, there is nothing to stop God from smiting the entire planet, since all that will be left is evil.”

“God is dead, or hiding,” Dean retorts.

“Yeah, and you don’t think my boss hasn’t been searching for him?” Crowley rolls his eyes. “I have something else to show you.”

Dean barely hears Crowley snap before they are in the snow outside of a small shack in the woods. There’s smoke coming from a fire in front of a large tent made of canvas. It smells like jerky. A smokehouse. Dean knows he should be hungry, the smell tells him he should be, but it’s not communicating that to his gut. Dean walks closer to the tent, hearing rustling inside. There is canvas pulled back and tied to the pillar of wood framing the makeshift smokehouse. That’s when he sees him.

“CAS!” Dean starts moving out of the tree line and towards the tent.

“Can’t see you,” Crowley ticks. “This happened in the past. Couple of weeks ago.”

Dean bites his lip at the thought. So close, so very close to Castiel and he can’t talk to him, touch him, admit to him a world of things. Instead he stands there, feeling like he’s lose his breath if he still had any, wanting to weep. He watches Castiel take meat down and place it in a basket at his feet. He watches him stop and his eyes go glassy. He watches as Castiel takes a knife from his pockets. The entire world slows down when Castiel slumps to his knees, rolling up his sleeve to expose his wrist. No no no no no, Dean begs silently. Dean feels a punch to the gut when Castiel cuts.

Dean can’t run fast enough to his side, he tries to put his hands on the wrist to stop the bleeding but he can’t, it’s like a damned hologram. He watches Cas hold it there, no pressure. He watches Castiel let himself bleed out.

“Cas, please don’t do this,” Dean falls to his knees, crying. “Cas I love you please! NO DAMMIT DON’T LEAVE ME TO DEAL WITH THIS ALONE!”

“Cas?” Sam’s voice comes from the tree line.

Cas looks up at the sound and back at his wrist. He clasps a hand on the wound. “SAM!”

Dean moves aside as Sam rushes to Castiel’s aid. He’s so gentle, so caring with the angel. Wait, former angel. A real angel wouldn’t use a regular knife to kill himself. Sam helps Cas stumble into the cabin, where he lays him down on a bedroll near the woodstove. He’s unconscious. Dean suspects that they haven’t had the most balanced of diets since leaving the camp in Wisconsin. Sam roots through a back and pulls out a red first aid kit. He gently begins to clean the wound as best he can, applying a touriquit just below the elbow before stitching him up. Dean watches Sam reposition Cast to make him comfortable, how he gently pushes sweaty hair off of his face. The look he gives him is so caring, his jaw steeled. That’s the expression Sam gets when he’s trying hard not to cry.

“You are all I have left,” Sam whispers to the sleeping man. “I know living without Dean is hard. I know you love him in a way I don’t. For you, four years is a minute. His death is so fresh, I know it hurts. It’s killing me too. But he’d kick our asses if we let anything happen to each other. Cas, I love you like you’re my brother. You are my brother. We have to take care of each other now.”

Dean turns around, storming out of the shed and right up to Crowley. “WHY WOULD YOU SHOW ME THIS?”

“Because I know you aren’t just any Knight of Hell. You’re too human. As much fun as you found that scene earlier, THIS is the reason you are going to help me.” Crowley’s face turns alarmingly soft. “Back in my blood-dosing days, I began to remember what it was like to be human. I knew that your humanity would fight the Mark and would fight this. Now I can’t turn you human again, all I have to offer is a chance to save them. Hell maybe if we’re lucky we can find God to make you one of his sheep again.

“This was all a test,” Dean admits.

Crowley snaps and they are back in the apartment, standing over the dying woman. She’s all carved up, barely breathing, and the other demons are gone. “I forced you out of your cabin so that you could have a taste. So you could see what is happening and see why it is a problem. I swear you Winchesters are the dumbest beings I have ever encountered.” He rolls his eyes. “Sure, you could binge on humans but then the world will end. Or you could help me stop Lucy and Mike and then we can restore some balance. Keep humans alive and reproducing so that we can feed on the fear—of course your boyfriend and your brother would be off-limits.”

Dean looks back to the woman, gasping her last breaths. He closes his eyes and lets her fear wash over him before grabbing a chunk of metal off the ground and thrusting it into her chest. She stops breathing almost instantly. Swift, painless, but that final scream makes his jeans grow tight again and his eyes nearly roll into the back of his head. Makes him want to vomit. Dean suppresses the gag, letting Sam’s words float through his mind. Composing himself, he turns back to Crowley.

“I’m in.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: None really, just angst. More angst. Then a bit more in case you didn’t get enough.
> 
> Summary: As Sam and Castiel take their big trip into the city for supplies, Cas comes clean about his injury in the smoke tent, and Sam realizes he’s missed something.

TWO WEEKS LATER

They manage to make it all the way to the high school—the first designated stop on their supply run—before the gas on their pickup finally runs out. Castiel looks down at their itinerary. They spent two weeks coming up with eight different plans depending on if they could find a vehicle, which location they would arrive at first, and the presence of Croatoans and demons. Sam flung himself full force into planning this trip, that research-hungry side of him having been dormant for so long. So far they are on Plan B, having been able to secure a pickup with an extended cab, and able to drive it very close to the first location for plan C, a high school. This high school should have supplies left, it was a designated refugee center that had reportedly sent out radio messages as late as nine months ago. The first one they found was burned to the ground. It was by sheer luck they were able to gather this information, Sam had come across someone’s journal in a mostly burned out vehicle three days ago.

“You ready?” Sam pockets the keys and looks over to Cas. His face is very serious, but there is a glimmer in his eyes that Cas can only describe as hope.

He nods. “Yes.”

“First we clear the place, then we go back and start loading up in order of necessity.” Sam exits the truck and rounds to the passenger side just as Castiel hops out. They both reach into the back and pull out packs with rations and first aid supplies, water and weapons. Cas takes the bat with nails sticking out of it and his spray bottle of holy water to keep it wet and stinging whoever is on the wrong end of it. Sam unsheathes Ruby’s knife as the two wordlessly move side by side towards the building. 

They never really went over the tactical plans for what to do once they arrived, over the years they’ve become fluid in their movements. They can dance through an onslaught of demons in a way that reminds Castiel of the ballet. The subconscious synchronicity they have, in all things actually, is the most comforting aspect of his relationship with Sam. They can perform chores at the homestead in comfortable silence or in random, non-forced conversation about the most mundane of things. He images this is what his life would have been like with Dean, had they ever had the chance. Although Castiel hopes that, in that fantasy life with Dean, there would be a more romantic fluidity to their lives, not to mention sexual intercourse in endless permutations.

He wonders if Sam would be interested in sexual intercourse with him. He has never given any indication of sexual attraction towards males, or towards him, but they’ve been together for so long. He witnesses Sam flirting with one of the women at the last camp, but he never stayed out late with her, never brought her home. The only indication that Sam had a sexual side of his persona was when Castiel could hear his muffled grunts in the middle of the night and smell of sweat and semen shortly afterwards. He supposed that, if they were together long enough, exploring the physical side of each other would happen eventually. The thought depressed him. Not because he didn’t care for Sam, but because it wasn’t Dean. It would never be Dean. Castiel will take care of Sam. If that means romantically, he will. He will love Sam and treat him with respect. He’ll be gentle and giving during the night and give Sam whatever he requires and it will be his pleasure to do as much. But no matter what, he won’t be Dean and it will never be perfect.

They find a once boarded up window with wood splintering out from the inside. Someone worked very hard to get out this way. No doubt demons were at the other entrances. Or Croatoans. But it’s quiet, meaning that any Croatoans still here are dead, and demons tend to go where living humans are hiding. Castiel climbs inside after Sam. Both men wordlessly pull flashlights out of their packs, having brought only one spare battery for each. Batteries are surprisingly easy to find these days since most civilians never thought to loot them. It’s only water, food and weapons they considered. Castiel pans his beam of light throughout the room. It’s a classroom. Desks are pushed against the walls and piled on top of one another. The center of the room contains beds composed of cots and sleeping bags. Pillows. Ten real pillows.

“We are so grabbing those,” Sam says, seeing the beds. “Maybe we’ll have time to scavenge some mattresses from a nearby house.”

“Doubt we’ll have the space in the truck,” Castiel replies. “Unless we find a trailer.”

The men move into the hallway. Castiel moves left, Sam moves right. He makes his way down the hallway, peering into classrooms. The first three classrooms are in the same state as the first. More pillows. There no bodies, indicating that they must have evacuated. He takes note of potential supplies as he peers into rooms. Rounding the corner, he sees a gymnasium ahead. Remembering the map, that means that the cafeteria is on the other side of the building, towards where Sam is headed. There may be a first aid kit inside the gym office in the locker rooms. Towels. Real towels they can use to clean themselves. Never would Castiel have thought that someday that the potential of towels would nearly bring him to tears of joy.

He opens the door to the boys’ locker room and steps cautiously inside. On the right is the coach’s office, door open. He steps inside and quickly finds a first aid kit hanging on the wall, but when he opens it he finds it’s empty. Castiel sits at the desk, pressing a palm to the cool wood. He can see his breath back here. Or perhaps he could see his breath since they got inside but he hadn’t noticed. All the things he doesn’t notice anymore that used to enthrall him. The ability to see one’s breath in the cold used to fascinate him to no end.

Might as well continue to search. Castiel begins opening drawers and taking stock of supplies. Papers, a gym whistle, pencils and rubber bands. The bottom drawer contains a nearly full bottle of brown alcohol. Jim Beam. Not even good stuff, Dean would say. His chest tightens as he removes the bottle and stands up. He’ll secret the bottle away until Christmas. He’ll get Sam drunk and he’ll get drunk and they’ll be able to forget for the night.

Castiel walks through the locker room, noticing dirty moldy towels pushed into the corners. A bin in the corner has a few folded and clean towels inside, but they appear dingy. After the power went out, they probably washed them in dirty water in buckets with washboards. At least they are clean…ish. Out of curiosity, Castiel begins opening lockers. Many of them have already been jimmied open, locked cut and smashed. Useful items have probably been removed, but Castiel isn’t looking for useful. He’s looking for a Christmas gift for Sam. He finds mostly notebooks, moldy gym clothes and bits of garbage. He’s about to give up and head into the gymnasium when he sees white wires sticking out of a backpack.

Digging through the backpack, Castiel pulls out earbuds and an iPod. He knows what this is, when Metatron gave him the gift of popular culture, an understanding of mp3 players came with it. The small blue device sits heavy in his palm. He unlocks it and turns it on and is surprised that it has full battery. After all these years nobody had turned it on to use it. Accessing more of that passed-on knowledge, he scans through the playlists. Only some of the songs are familiar, again, from that same second hand intelligence. He quickly turns off the device and pockets it. It might not last long, but Sam can listen to music for at least a few hours. 

That seems like a special Christmas gift.

~

“Tomorrow, we’ll pack up the truck. If it’s full, we can hopefully get some vitamins for that drugstore I saw on the map before we head back home.” Sam slumps down onto his bedroll next to Castiel. “We’ve got enough canned food and MRE’s to last several months when mixed with our meat.”

Castiel smiles and hands Sam a can of peaches, keeping one of pineapple for himself. The fruit and the juice is sweet and the noises that come out of him after each bite cause Sam to raise an eyebrow. His expression becomes one of mutual joy when he slurps down half his can of peaches in one gulp. “Fuck that’s better than sex.”

“Obviously you haven’t had enough good sex,” Castiel says. 

It’s something Dean would have said, a thought not lost on Sam. He lays on his bedroll, which is about ten wool blankets and just as many pillows. Luxurious compared to the beds back at the shack. Castiel has the same setup, using pillows in between some of the blankets to create a softer mattress. A small fire built in the middle of a high school gym—the only room where the smoke wouldn’t overtake them in the night. Sam feels hopeful. Sam watches pineapple juice escape Castiel’s lips and drip down his chin and he finds himself watching just a little bit too long, but he can’t figure out why. Fruit. Pillows. 

“We need to find a house,” he says, finishing off his meal of peaches and throwing the can across the gym. He listens to it clammer to a stop in the dark corner before turning on his side to face Cas. “Settle down. Find a farm in the country. We could grow vegetables to can for the winter.”

Cas furrows his brow, laying on his back and staring up at the ceiling. “You want to join another group?”

“No, I…I can’t lose anyone else.” Sam swallows, already feeling a twinge of pain at the thought of losing Cas. “You and me, we can find a place and make a real home. Not just some shack in the woods.”

“What if the demons find us? I’d hate to build another home only to watch it burn to the ground.” Castiel sounds sad, defeated. Sam’s heart begins to break.

“We’ll fight them off or die together.” Sam puts on a fake, optimistic smile and turns onto his own back. “Promise me you won’t leave?”

“Never, I know now that I’ll never leave.” Cas takes an audibly deep breath. “I can only hope you forgive me for what happened in the smoke tent.”

“What are you talking about? Accidents are…”

“I purposely slit my wrist in an attempt to end my life.”

Sam was hoping they could just pretend that never happened. He wanted to pretend that he didn’t know Cas did it on purpose and that now that he’s mostly healed everything will be okay. He clears his throat but still the word comes out as barely more than a whisper. “Why?”

“I’ve been human for a combined total of less than five years,” Cas says, speaking equally quiet. “Loss as an angel isn’t as crippling. Yes, it’s painful. I mourn the loss of all my brothers and sisters. But as a human is physically hurts. Losing Dean still seems insurmountable. I knew as an angel that he would eventually die but that he could have a chance to go to heaven. I could…”

“Be with him?” Sam says.

“Yes,” Cas whispers. “I don’t know how to explain. Profound.”

Sam smiles to himself. He’s not really sure what those two had, but the swears that on more than one occasion he caught Dean giving Cas his “fuck me” eyes. He had always assumed Dean was as straight as an arrow but there was something that came over him when Castiel was around. Sam can’t even pinpoint when it happened for Dean, but he knows it happened for Castiel the first time he saw the two of them in the same room together. What he thought was a look of confusion was actually Cas examining Dean up close.

“How long had you been watching him? Before you pulled him out of hell?”

“All his life.” Cas turns to face Sam and Sam reciprocates. Cas’s eyes are glossy with tears that threaten to fall over the lids and down his face. “When the angels first heard that God summoned the cupids with a special task, we were all intrigued. Who would come from such a union and why? When Dean was born, Gabriel said he could feel a vibrating in his wings. Us soldiers didn’t have such a connection. But I started watching him, and then you. But I was afraid. All those times I could have saved the both of you, your father, and I was still under the thumb of God. Fearful of him. But when I was chosen to pull him from hell, I knew it was because I was expendable. They were not expecting me to survive, nor for Dean to find out about angels.”

“Your interference was what, an accident?”

“In a way. I was ordered to pull Dean out of hell, but I wasn’t supposed to make myself known. I may have lied to my superiors about why I had to interfere. I did it because I couldn’t let him go. Either of you. I saw into his soul when I put him back together and I…” Cas finally breaks, tears falling hot out of his eyes, voice cracking and threatening to turn into a scream in pain. “My existence without him is impossible.”

“Mine too. I guess,” Sam reaches into his pocket and grabs a rag, handing it to Cas to wipe his face. “I guess I just have more experience with loss.”

“I want to rip my insides out it hurts,” Cas cries.

He knows Castiel is practically an infant when it comes to being human. All the knowledge, the weight of the world he’s carried since the beginning of time was held up by the lack of emotions, the lack of a soul. Sam remembers the feeling. When he was put back together everything was crushing. Sam sits up and awkwardly pulls Castiel into his lap and hugs him as if he were a child. He holds him so tightly he’s afraid of crushing him. It isn’t until he sees a drop appear on Cas’s clothing that he realizes he’s crying too.

“I’m glad I found you when I did,” he whispers. “You’re the only thing holding me together.”

“I’m…glad too.” Cas hiccups and looks up at Sam. Sam begins to smile and giggle through his tears at the sight of the nearly infantile man in his arms. “What’s so funny?”

“I’m cradling you in my arms, Cas,” Sam says, loosening his grip. He finds the sudden cold where they part stings. Cas sits up right next to him, faces inches apart. “Kinda like a kid. But dude, it’s okay. We both obviously really needed it.”

“Thank you,” Cas says. “Uhm, I suppose its selfish of me to talk about my loss without talking about yours.”

“I lost him so many times, and I knew once he killed Abaddon there was…hell did things to him that never went away. Nothing anyone else could fix. I was always prepared to lose him. Doesn’t make it hurt less, but at least I was prepared.” Sam clears his throat. “But Dean belonged to you in a different way.”

“Belonged to me?” Castiel tilts his head.

“Ah, I dunno. He liked you a lot. Maybe it’s because you were all up in him putting him together, but he always felt close to you. I dunno, looked at you a lot when you weren’t looking. Thought about you, talked to you.” Sam moved back to his bed and laid on his back. “Anyway, we’ll keep moving forward because that’s what we have to do.”

“We’ll do that together?” Cas asks, laying down on his own bed.

“Of course.”

He closes his eyes and pulls a wool blanket over his clothed body to try to get warm. He needs sleep. They’ll need the whole day to load the truck, get home, and unload and haul into the woods. But it felt so good, so comforting to hold Cas so close. He knows they both needed the physical contact. He feels even colder on the parts that were touching than the parts that were not. It had been years before his death since Dean would touch a hand to his shoulder or back, or even stand just close enough to feel his body heat. To know everything is okay. Castiel only made physical contact with him when it was required. But this time it felt so wonderful to have that close touch. It’s been years since he’s been with someone in bed, just as long since he’d hugged anyone. He hugged Dean as he died. That was the last time.

Although if Castiel found his way into a cuddle in the middle of the night, he wouldn’t push him away.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean, who seems to have bought Crowley’s story that Lucifer will destroy existence if he wins, is starting to amass an army of demons. But he still can’t decide exactly what he should do, other than the gorgeous demon with hauntingly familiar eyes standing in his doorway.

A young blonde woman wearing heels and a skirt that couldn’t be shorter if it tried opens a door. She enters the dark bar and pushes her way around upturned tables and shattered chairs. Her heels click on the hard wood floors as she moves behind the bar. It only takes her a minute of searching to find a bottle of whiskey. This is the tenth establishment she has been to tonight and she’s pissed off. She’s not even sure she really buys into what he’s been telling her. He probably believes that he can do it, but she thinks he doesn’t have a chance. Still, she couldn’t get in with the other guy so she might as well cozy up to this one. She doesn’t even remember her name anymore, doesn’t remember what she did to earn her new role. She might not even be female. She takes women’s bodies because she loves how soft they are.

She’s hoping he does too.

It takes nearly an hour to walk back to the hotel they are calling base camp in these heels. When she finally arrives, the guard at the door has changed. Now it’s a young girl in dirty clothes, old tears streaked through the brown muck on her cheeks. Some demons think they are so clever don’t they? Why be an innocent looking child when you can have a rack like this? It’s much more fun to take part in debauchery and excess in an adult form—although some of her demonic siblings have their own perverted kinks. She nods her way past the child and into the main lobby. He’s staying in the Presidential Suite, of course. 15 floors up and no elevator---common demons in human vessels can’t just blink themselves up there.

By the time she reaches the door to his suite she is more than annoyed to see that there are two men there, just standing there inside the room like lame ass guards. She nods her way through them, holding up the bottle as a non-verbal form of communication. She steps right up to Dean Winchester, lounging in his huge bed, and sits next to him, offering the bottle. “Here you go sir, I found this and thought you would enjoy it.”

He takes the bottle and sets it on the side table. “What’s your name?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t remember.”

“Ah,” he props himself up on a shoulder, facing her. “Old school bad ass.”

“I remember the black plague, but I honestly can’t tell if I was human or demon by then,” she says, smiling wide. “All of us downstairs are on your side, sir. But none so much as me.”

He smirks and turns away. “It’s pretty clear sweetheart. Lucifer is only using his children as pawns. It’s all about him. I’d much rather share the wealth.”

“But,” she leans in and quickly tears her tank top open, letting her soft round breasts bounce free in front of his face, “why?”

Dean pulls her close and buries his face in her chest. “I like the old way of things, lurking around. Call me a fan of the classics,” he mutters. He kisses and licks a few more moments before gently pushing her away. “Thanks for the booze sweetheart, but I’m going to need to give our King a call.”

“What? Don’t you like this?” She pouts.

He smiles. “Later sister.” He stands up beside the bed and gestures to the door.

Dick.

~

Dean waits until she leaves before summoning his guards over. “I don’t want anyone but Crowley to come in,” he says. 

“Yes sir.”

The deep growl that replies back goes straight to his cock. When he turns around and sees that it’s not really Cas he nearly screams. But this man has dark mussed hair, blue-gray eyes, and three days of stubble. It’s close. Maybe if he turns off the lights he can pretend. He motions towards him. “You stay in here,” he points to the other man. “You, outside.”  
The other man nods and leaves Dean alone with Almost-Cas. The demon smirks at Dean. “Where would you like me to be?”

Dean walks over, grabs the bottle that was delivered by the blonde, and opens it as he walks over to Almost-Cas. He takes a big swig before offering it to the man. Demon. He’s a demon, its okay. Demons don’t care about gender or sexuality, just the act itself being pleasurable is all that matters. Sure, young demons have their preferences, because they still remember what it is like to be human. He’s learned a lot in the past few weeks about his new tribe. He watches the demon take a swig and hand him back the bottle. “Thank you, sir.”

Dean grasps the demon’s jaw just tight enough to maintain control. “Call me Dean.”

The demon smiles. “Dean.”

“Why are you here?” He grunts, taking another drink, his hand not leaving the demons’ jaw.

“I guess you could say that I’m a fan of the classics as well,” the demon grunts.

Dean takes the cheap drink and pours a shot into the demon’s mouth. He watches Almost-Cas smile in appreciation. “Suck my cock,” he orders, waiting for the demon to swallow the booze.

The demon slams to his knees and greedily yanks down Dean’s zipper and jeans. Dean rolls his head back when the hot wet mouth envelops him. Taking another drink, he reaches a free hand into his breast pocket to finger the name tag. The demon is pretty decent, running his tongue into the slit and taking him down into his throat. Dean grips the short, dark hair and pulls, eliciting a dirty hum from the demon vessel on him. He lets obscene grunts slide out if his mouth as he watches the head bob on his cock. This IS Cas, he wants to think. His beautiful angel finally. He takes another drink before slamming the bottle to the ground to grip Cas’s head in both hands and fucking his face. He looks down and takes notice of the man’s clothing. No trench coat. He’s not really Cas. Dean grips the hair so hard he knows some will come out, but he doesn’t care. The demon won’t either since they can’t feel physical pain unless it’s by holy water, salt or the demon blade. He pushes his cock so far deep inside the man’s throat that if he were human he would have choked to death by now. Instead the demon hums and grunts and produces slick saliva all over him. Dean comes down the demon’s throat and quickly pulls the demon back to a standing position. “Bed, now,” he moans, pushing the demon onto the bed and climbing on top of him.

He snaps to make the lights go out. If he can’t see the demon he can continue pretending.

~

“Rise and shine!” 

Dean groans at the light invading the room, refusing to open his eyes. He recognizes Crowley’s voice and hears his footsteps on the carpet towards the other window. He rolls onto his other side to feel a body next to him. The demon stayed, probably pretending to be asleep just like he was. It was a pretty damned good fuck for not really being Cas. Probably one of the better ones for not being Cas. Getting off as a demon isn’t the same as it was being a human. In a lot of ways it feels so fake and dishonest. Neither of them are getting the rush of fear or emotion that comes off of humans, so it’s much less satisfying. Of course, Dean only felt in passing emotion, he never raped a human. Would never rape a human. 

“This one is pretty,” Crowley says, looking at the young demon vessel getting dressed. “Excuse me there Fake-Castiel, can you leave the grown-ups to talk?”

The demon nods silently and smiles at Dean before grabbing the rest of his clothing and leaving the room. Dean winces at Cas’s name. Crowley sees right through him. Not that it really fucking matters anymore. “What do you want?”

“I want to talk about our game plan.” He sits on the bed next to Dean and begins to lift up the sheet. “Do I get to see what you are packing?”

“Fuck off,” Dean grips the sheet extra tight. “What plan? How the fuck do we get demons to stop Lucifer? He is there fearless leader. I mean there are a few here that believe me but…fuck.”

“Seems like you are doing quite a lot of that lately,” Crowley mutters.

“You said I need to get my energy up and since I refuse to suck human blood…or human anything.”

“Sucking demon cock, or visa versa, won’t do much. You need to feed on human energy. For being a Knight of Hell you are way too polite to the humans.” Crowley stands up, taking an extra big step over the shattered bottle and puddle of booze on the ground. “You can get human blood without killing a human you know.”

“No, no fucking way. That shit nearly killed Sam. Started this whole thing the first time.” He knows that Crowley might have a point. That demon’s dick was so tasteless that he can’t even remember it being in his mouth. He sits up and snaps. Nothing happens. He snaps again. “Fuck.”

“What were you trying to do, princess? Get dressed? Bring that pretty little Cas-wannabe back here?” Crowley rolls his eyes in exacerbation. “You need to feed. Screwing demons doesn’t do much for your juice other than to get off. Human fear and blood, now that’s the other, other, other white meat.”

“You think I was fucking that guy because I wanted to feed?” Dean yells. “I do it because I miss…" he swallows his words, lying back on the bed. The Knight of Hell isn’t supposed to be weak. Isn’t supposed to miss people. “So then we just tell the demons what we are really doing, trying to save our own asses. We just keep getting demons on our side, organize a stop to all human pain and torture and stopping the spread of Croatoan. Protect the few human beings left.”

“And what if Lucy gets a couple of double agents in the mix? Then we’ve rounded them up for the slaughter!” Crowley sneers. “We need some more powerful players on our side.”

“Like God?” Dean laughs. “Good luck.”

“We know someone who could help us with that.”

Dean wants to vomit. Every fiber of his being says he should, but his demonic soul helps him resist the urge. The very thought that he could present himself to Castiel this way is unspeakable. He wouldn’t be able to withstand the look on Cas’s face when he stands before him, black oily eyes trying to beg for forgiveness. He doesn’t want to be the reason Cas’s heart breaks. Thinking he is dead is better than knowing what’s become. 

“No,” Dean says softly. “Not him.”

“Look, I get it, you don’t want to be rejected by feathers…”

“The moment Cas or Sam know what I am, they won’t stop.” Dean clears his throat. “They’ll kill me or exorcise me and then our plan is fucked. And I know a regular rite won’t work on me but they won’t stop until they figure out how.”

“Now why would they do that? Because…because that’s what you’d want them to do?” Crowley laughs. “You’d want them to kill you rather than live like one of us? How selfish.”

“You’ve been a dick so long that you forgot what it’s like. To remember your human side. All the people you loved are gone. Mine are still alive and kicking and fighting against me. I can’t even…I can’t even tell them what I’m doing is for them. I don’t give a shit about demons being able to keep playing. I want you and the rest of the them to rot. All I’m going to do is stop the end of times so that Sam and Cas can live a happily ever after.”

“That’s not what you were going to do before,” Crowley responds. “You wanted to turn them.”

“Either they live happily ever after or they die.”

Dean slumps back into his bed and tries as hard as he can to keep from bawling in front of Crowley. He feels so stupid in this bed, in a hotel full of demons who have joined his cause when in reality the moment he stops Lucifer and Michael he’s going after each and every single one. Personally. Until he is the only one left. Then he’ll find someone to take him out. Somehow. Sammy and Cas can go about whatever life they have left. As long as he is Crowley’s right hand, and fuck he doesn’t care if Crowley wants the crown, he can keep Sam and Cas protected.

“Look Dean, if we come clean now nobody will trust us and we will lose what few followers we have because they won’t have any reason to trust us. We need backup.” Crowley walks towards the door, but not before snapping and leaving Dean fully dressed. “I’ll let you think about it for a few days. Not too long though, we don’t have that kind of time.”

Dean closes his eyes and listens to Crowley shut the door. They need help, they need to stop Lucifer and Michael from destroying existence. Give Sammy and Cas a chance. But wouldn’t everyone just be better off dead at the end? What kind of world is left for Sam and Cas? There is so much uncertainty that Dean feels like he changes his mind every five minutes. At first he went into hiding because he knew he couldn’t die and knew they were better off without him. He can’t turn them, even if they wanted to. Destroying existence is just as heartbreaking, if not more so. Then they just wouldn’t be. He can deal with himself, but not with doing that to Sam.

“Time to fucking stick to a choice,” Dean mutters. It’s like some really badly written passion play. Do this, not do this. Then do that and then change your mind again. Crowley obviously wants to be the new satan, and honestly he can have it. As long he promises to leave them alone he’ll let the fucker climb up the corporate ladder unharmed.

Dean saunters out into the hallway, looking for that Castiel lookalike. He goes down to the small atrium near the elevators and sees four men lounging on the cheaply made loveseats flanking the gold elevator doors. He smirks lightly at the men, making eye contact with his fuck buddy. “I have a job.”

The demon rises with a smile. Obviously it was still somewhat fun, even if it came with no real pull of energy for either one of them. He muses on what a succubus and incubus must have to do to get off before the demon replies. “What do you need done?”

“I need the word put out, no harm to come to Sam Winchester.”

“Got it.”

“Or Castiel. He’s human now.”

The demon looks back at his friends. “You want us to protect a fucking former angel?”

“He’s my secret ace in the hole,” Dean smirks. He looks back at the other three demons. “I need a human. But someone who is willing to be possessed. I don’t want someone taken against their will.”

“Someone who wants to be a demon?”

“Yeah, there’s got to be some out there, right? People who gave up on the fight, who want the power, want to join the winning team. I want them before they become a meat suit. But nobody is to hurt them, that’s my job.” Dean crosses his arms over his chest. “Doable?”

The three nod. “Yes sir,” a blonde replies strongly. Deep voice for a scrawny guy.

“And you,” Dean motions to the Castiel wannabe. “My room.”

While he’s waiting…


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Cas have a merry and awkward Christmas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: angst, drunken sexual activity (I have no idea how this happened but I swear this story isn’t Sastiel!)

Christmas Eve

Holding his sides, he watches Castiel laugh himself onto his back, head sinking into his pillows. Real pillows they took from that school last month. It’s one of the luxuries they afforded themselves. That and the two full mattresses they found in an abandoned house. Although it’s a tight fit—the two fit side by side in the shed with no room in between. Franken-bed Sam had called it. While it felt like sharing a king bed with Cas, he was so happy to have a real bed for the first time since they left the last camp that he could care less about brushing legs in the night with the man.

The cheap booze they had scavenged tasted absolutely horrendous, but that’s what they get for finding several bottles with a swig or two left in the bottom and mixing them all together. Sam always liked being drunk, but only at the time. His body felt light and warm and suddenly he could find happiness. Castiel was an adorable drunk, he smiled and laughed like a small child. It made Sam so happy inside he wanted to squeeze the funny little man like a teddy bear.

Woah, he was drunk.

The shed was filled with the smell of cheap alcohol and some “pumpkin spice” candles that Sam had found on their second trip. He told Cas that the scent reminded him of fall back before things changed. He said it smelled like pie, to which Castiel replied that it smells like ass-pie before bursting into a fit of laughter that send his head onto his pillows and left Sam giggling like a child. Sam likes the way laughing feels when he’s drunk, it feels fun. It’s merely a physical reaction to an emotional state of being, but it’s not one that he’s been in for the past four years. Feeling tired, he decided to flop himself down on his bed next to Cas. 

“Ss almost gone,” Sam slurs, pointing the bottle he left on their new table. It was a blue end table Castiel has seen in the same house they got the beds from. He liked the color so much that he asked Sam if he could bring it back. He remembers Cas begging him for it for nearly ten minutes before he gave in. It was sweet and endearing, really, and the only reason Sam made every effort to strap it down to the hood of the truck cab.

“I’m not drunk enough,” Castiel said. “Best Christmas ever.”

“We could start making moonshine,” Sam says, rolling over until his arm is touching Castiel’s. He leans into the touch, feeling comforted by another person so close. Cas was never one for personal space anyway, and they are drunk. “Then we can sit on our porch of our farm and drink ourselves to nighty night.”

“Nighty night?”

“That thing…SLEEP!” Sam laughs. “Seriously, Cas, I have something for you.” He rolls back over to his side of the franken-bed and digs under his pillow, pulling out a small box wrapped with old newspapers. He rolls back and hands it to Cas. “Merry Christmas.”

Castiel takes the small box gingerly in his hands, cradling it like a baby bird. Sam fights the instinct to grab him up in his arms. “It’s so ssspecial,” he slurs, threatening to cry. “It’s like an inside-out book.”

Sam laughs. “It’s wrapping paper, the present ‘side.”

Cas studies the gift like it’s the most sacred object in the world and to open it would be some sort of crime. He finally gives and gingerly opens the packaging as if it were plated gold and ripping it would constitute some sort of crime. He carefully opens the small box and pulls out a black cord with a metal charm on the end. Castiel palms the charm and pulls it up to his face, the light from the woodstove and pumpkin scented candles mixing with his alcohol haze make the room seem so intense and Sam feels the need to break it.

“There angel’s wings” Sam says, sitting up next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Sam knew when he saw it at the house on the dresser that it would mean everything to Cas. Two metal angel wing pendants. Silver. Castiel now has his wings back. The wings he would have lost, the wings he traded in because of his love for humanity, mostly for the brother that isn’t in this shack. He looks over to Sam and barely opens his mouth to thank him when Cas’s lips suddenly find their way onto his.

They are soft and needy, tasting like the shit liquor they’ve been drinking. Cas pushes his tongue inside Sam’s mouth and Sam finds himself licking it. His head is swimming and this is Cas…Dean’s Cas…but he tastes good. He hasn’t kissed anyone in ages but this kiss is wonderful. Sam feels a hand on his hip and a second one eagerly undoing his jeans. Why is Sam hard? He’s drunk and the kissing is so good and now Cas is palming his cock and he wants something, anything, more to happen. He wants something other than his own hand before he dies. But even with the alcohol making him question the number of Castiel’s in the room, he knows this isn’t what they should be doing.

“Cas,” Sam pants between kisses. “Don’t want this.”

Cas instantly stops, pushing back and pulling his hand out of his pants. “I didn’t mean…”

“No, it was nice.” Sam wipes the spit off his swollen lips. “I wouldn’t, I don’t…I’m drunk. You are drunk.”

Cas looks embarrassed, but he nods. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed.” He gets up to put the candles and lanterns out, leaving the room in the very dim glow pulsing from the woodstove.

Holy shit, did that just happen? Did Sam actually like it? He could see Dean’s ‘I’m going to kill you’ face in his mind now. You got my angel drunk and manipulated him, took advantage. You sick bastard! Sam smirks into his pillow at the thought. He’s drunk off his ass, and he’s been lonely as hell, and he kinda sorta liked it.

He sits up to pull off his clothes and slips on some cotton pants when he hears Castiel sobbing next to him. Lying back down, his heart breaks watching the angel, well the former angel, crying because of his rejection. He scoops him into his arms and holds him against his bare chest---not sending any mixed signals is he?--until they both fall asleep.

~

Sam wakes up with Cas’s head on his chest, his body snuggled up warm against him. His head is pounding and he curses the garbage-pail booze of the night before, but curses it more because it wasn’t enough to forget what happened. His arm is around Cas, holding him close. He remembers giving Castiel the wings, the awkward kiss and hand in his pants, and the man crying in his arms until he fell asleep—or passed out. Sam slunk the two of them to the bed and held him close, feeling awkwardly comforted by the closeness. He was also scared that if he let go of Cas, he’d disappear. He doesn’t think he can handle it if Cas was gone.

He has to take a piss, he wants to brew some tea, he wants his present from Cas. But instead he just lies there, staring at the tin roof of the shed, and allowing Cas’s warmth to keep him comfortable and safe.

~

He awakens again to the smell of tea and oats. He sits up and sees Castiel standing over the woodstove, stirring the oats in the small cast iron pot they reserved for making breakfast. He blinks his eyes several times to make the room come into focus. He sees a small box on the table between the beds and the stove. His gift. He smiles so big his headache gets worse but it doesn’t really matter.

“Oh, hey,” Cas turns around as Sam sits at the table. He pulls a small bottle out of his pocket and sets it in front of Sam, following with a mug of tea. “For the headache.” He seems so calm considering what happened last night, calm enough that Sam hopes he was too drunk and that he’ll never remember. Good.

Sam quickly swallows the pills chasing them with a sip of delicious tea. He would have never drunk tea before the end of the world. “Can you turn off the sun, it’s bright in here.”

Castiel smirks. “I cannot do that for you, Sam.” He puts a bowl of steaming oats in front of Sam. “Eat up.”

“How are you not hung over?” Sam asks, taking a mouthful of sweet oats. “Shit, where did you find sugar?”

“Honey,” Cas said. “I found a little bit of honey in that pantry back at the house. I saved it for today.” Cas sits across from him and smiles. “Open your gift.”

Sam feels like his heart could burst for the man. He quickly opens the box and finds an iPod. “How the hell…”

“It has a full battery. It won’t last forever but it will be good for a few hours of music,” Cas smiles. “I hope you like the music.”

“At this point, it could be Justin Bieber and I would love it,” Sam smiles. It’s the truth, any music would sound amazing to him, and it’s been so long. “Thank you.”

“Merry Christmas,” Castiel says in return.

It’s at this point Sam notices the wings around his neck. Sam breaks his smile during the quiet meal only to shovel food or sip tea. This might be the best Christmas he could have hoped for, short of Dean being alive.

~

Sam pours the warm water over Cas’s hair to rinse out the soap he used to clean it. It’s cold outside but the warm water they’ve been pouring over each other cancels it out. However, Sam should have dried his hair before helping Cas out…his locks are starting to form into icicles. He hands Cas a towel and doesn’t look directly at his nudity when he stands and walks quickly into the shed. They are used to nudity, they change and sponge bathe daily in front of each other in the shed. Of course the pale skin isn’t as alluring as it was in the shadows of the shed last night. Oh wow, Sam really needed to find a woman.

Cas didn’t take his wings off to bathe. Sam took it as the utmost form of gratitude.

The men run back into the warm shack. It’s not just the temperature, it’s become rather cozy. There’s the tea pot Castiel found, and of course the bed. Even the small table and folding chairs added a level of normalcy to their fucked-up lives. Sam tries to pretend he’s not watching Cas put his clothes on, not examining how his skin pulls over muscles that would be bigger had they enough proper nutrition, and only look as big as they are due to the lack of body fat. His skin is creamy white where clothes touch day after day. Places Sam shouldn’t be looking---but it’s out of curiosity. He wonders what sort of horned up monster was awoken last night and just how mad he’s going to go to keep him at bay. Sleeping with Cas would feel like stealing Dean’s prom date.

Sam quickly gets dressed in what are new clothes---they raided an old department store and surprisingly enough, there were lots of clothes left. Most people went for other practical items not realizing how quickly clothes can become threadbare and how cold it would be during the winter nights. This pair of pants he had been saving for this day, actually. Sweatpants. Such a ridiculous choice but the warmth and comfort was perfect. They didn’t have to labor much today, other than bathe and make meals. Sam grabs his iPod from the table and slides onto his mattress, the woodstove keeping it warm enough for him to settle with sweatpants, thick socks, and a hoodie. He beings to put both buds in but pauses.

“Cas, do you want to listen?” He holds out an earbud.

He shakes his head. “It’s your gift, you enjoy.”

“I don’t want to enjoy this alone. Come on,” he pats the bed. “Please? Just listen with me. Even if it’s the Spice Girls, it will still be fun.”

Cas smiles sheepishly but acquiesces. Dressed in his own warm clothing he lays on his back next to Sam, taking the offered ear bud. Sam quickly turns the device on and scans the track listing, not too familiar with the songs listed but he sees some top 40-type song titles. He hits random and closes his heads, letting the beats and melodies fill his head. He only recognizes a few songs over the course of the afternoon, but it’s just fine. Occasionally he looks over to Cas, who seems to be carefully contemplating every note in every song. Sam remembers that Metatron gave Cas all the stories of the world at some point, so of course he probably knows some of these songs better than he does.

He looks at the face of the iPod, they have about three hours left. He turns it off and turns onto his side to look at Cas. “Hey, save the rest for later?”

Cas hands the earbud back. “As you wish. Thank you for sharing it with me.” He rolls on his side to face Sam. “We could join a camp again.”

“Everyone we meet dies,” Sam says somberly. It’s so incredibly childish to think that way.

“You seem lonely.”

“I have you, Cas.”

“I’m talking about the company of a woman,” he says more sternly.

“I get my needs met.” Sam finds himself alarming okay with talking to Cas about this. “I mean…”

“Masturbation.”

Sam clears his throat. Either Cas is one smooth talker or he doesn’t remember anything that happened last night. “Are you asking me this because you…uhm…well…man this is awkward.”

“I apologize for my sexual advances towards you last night,” Cas says with enough earnest that knocks the breath out of Sam. “I shouldn’t have presumed, let alone while we were intoxicated. I just thought…I would like to see you happy. As I understand that, it usually means a romantic relationship.”

“I...” Sam swallows his words so his eyes stop threatening to cry. Cas is being so endearing and so caring and Sam feels like he could never repay the understanding and kindness bestowed upon him. “I’m happy in this cabin…”

“It’s a shed.”

“Fine, then I’m happy in this shed. With you helping me out. Someone I can trust to have my back. And if that means jerking off in the middle of the night while you are sleeping…although I guess sometimes you aren’t…then that’s what it is.” Sam smiles earnestly at Cas. “I am has happy as I can possibly be given the state of things. You don’t have to offer yourself to me, it’s not that I wasn’t flattered…”

“You had an erection.” Cas says quietly.

“Dude, I was wasted…” Sam begins, realizing that sounding macho is not going to be effective right now. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,” Cas withdraws slightly, rolling onto his back and turning away from Sam. 

“No, Cas, it’s okay. Nothing has changed about our friendship, our partnership, and how much you mean to me. I mean it.”

Cas turns back and smiles. “I still feel stupid.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. Happens to guys all the time,” the lie flows out but honestly, it probably does happen more often than he would have thought before.

Cas stands up and looks down at Sam, displaying swollen blue eyes that dig deeply into his. “Merry Christmas Sam.”

“Merry Christmas, Cas.” Sam takes Cas’s offered hand up. “Now, let’s make dinner and finish off that booze.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rating: R for sex  
> Pairing: eventual Destiel, hints of Sastiel (purely by Cas’s inability to read social cues)  
> Warnings: Scary strangers, Dean banging other demons
> 
> Summary: Crowley finally has Dean thinking clearly about the cause, but not about how to best handle Sam and Cas. Meanwhile, Sam and Cas go on another supply run and find something they didn’t expect.
> 
> Sorry this update took so long. I was working overtime, then my family came to visit me in Lawrence, then I had my wisdom teeth pulled…it’s been pretty hectic.

Soon he’ll be possessed and it won’t matter. The screams or the begging. He wanted to join their side, now he’s simply getting what he wished for. Dean braces himself for the next cry, the next plead to just put a demon in him. It’s so amazingly gratifying he is wondering why he didn’t indulge more sooner. That stupid bit of humanity left inside of him. Just enough to keep him working towards the real goal, taking out Michael and Lucifer.

Then he’ll deal with Crowley and himself and the rest of the rats.

Watching the human cry out, Dean nods to the two demons holding him down. The blonde woman opens her mouth wide and the black smoke escapes, going into the man. The woman’s body falls, having been badly beat up prior to the possession. The man, who was just screaming for his life, stands up and adjusts his tie. “This one is much better.”

Dean smiles, noticing the blue tie is similar to the one Cas used to wear. “It sure is.”

“Sir,” another demon approaches. “We’ve got a lead.”

“Where?”

“They were seen in St. Louis just a few weeks ago, gathering supplies. I assume for their location.”

“And did anyone follow them?”

“Tried, but they put traps on the main road and by the time they figured out a way around, they lost the tail.”

Dean sighs. “Keep an eye. Nobody is to touch them, they are off limits. Don’t even look at them funny. Send the word out.”

He nods to excuse the demon from his presence. He looks to the other two and points to the body of the woman. “Remove that.”

He turns and heads to a nearby bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror. He’s got blood on his face. Probably from that razor cut to the human’s stomach…just enough to scare him and enough for Dean to get his jollies. Smiling, he wipes the blood away. St. Louis, that’s not terribly far from where they are now. Columbia. He knows they have been moving back towards Lawrence since just before Christmas, with the excuse that Dean was sick of the snow. He realizes that Crowley is not a fan of Dean’s continued sentimentality, but they both know it’s the only thing keeping Dean on task for taking Lucifer and Michael down instead of turning into a knife-wielding, human raping demon.

He finishes cleaning himself off and steps into the hallway to see a young man, all of 25, with bright blue eyes and dark brown hair. Fuck, what an uncommon combination and why the hell does he manage to meet them all? Dean pushes the demon against the wall, grabs him by the collar of his shirt and kisses him so hard he can taste blood. Not human, but still delicious. He breaks the kiss with a loud and sloppy pop before he grabs the demon and turns him around, slamming his chest into the wall with a thud. He snaps his own jeans open but chooses to violently rip the demon’s jeans off and force himself inside.

Dean leaves the demon panting against the wall, spent and leaning against a wall sprayed with its own semen while Dean’s seed drips down the back of its thighs. The scene is so perverse but Dean can’t help but picture Cas’s wrecked face looking back at him as he buttons up his pants and saunters down the hallway, passing by open rooms of the office complex with other demons lounging about. As he passes the door he hears a small chorus of light laughs.

“Sounds like Garrett got it good,” a male voice says. “Man I wish I had blue eyes.”

“Why is that?” asks another male voice.

“Cuz Dean fucks all the guys with blue eyes, rumor is that he’s good, lets the other guy get off hard too.”

“Why blue eyes?”

“No fucking clue. But boss says we do what Dean says. Besides, Lucifer teaming up with a fucking angel? Nothing good for us. Fuck that guy.”

“What about that Castiel he ordered all of us to protect? Ain’t he an angel?”

“Former. Dude gave up his grace and denounced the rest of those feathery fucks. Might as well be one of us.”

Dean continues down the hallway with a smirk on his face. At least the rumor mill labels him a good lay. They sound like they won’t turn on Sam and Cas either—he had to admit he was afraid that they might when they found out Cas was an angel. At least they seem to be on board with the new regime.

Dean wonders how Sam is managing his new life. He’s heard of sightings in St. Louis with him and Cas scavenging for supplies. How long is Sam’s hair now? Does Cas have a beard like he did in purgatory? Has Cas gotten used to his human form now or is Sam still trying to explain basic bodily functions? Dean thinks back to those days in the cabin, the way the grace tasted in his veins. The way he felt close to Cas. Dean knows full well that he’s fucking demons that remind him of Cas and he doesn’t care. He’ll never get to touch Cas’s cheek, look into those eyes with intent. He’ll never get to kiss him and hold him and make love to him. So he fucks the shit out of blue-eyed demons with dark hair and hopes that makes up for what he cannot have. Makes him feel close to Cas. 

The way he wishes he had a way to feel close to Sam again. He could try. He could get some demons to get Sam’s blood, dope himself up. He knows sanctified human blood can cure a demon, but with The Mark there is no way of knowing if it wouldn’t just make him stronger. Maybe when this is all over, he’ll do just that. At least he’ll be close to Sam again.

~

Cas looks up at the stars through the grimy windshield of the pickup and smiles. It doesn’t sadden him to think about his former life anymore. He doesn’t miss the connection to his siblings, because he could pray to the ones that are still around if he wanted to see them again. He does miss the powers his grace afforded him, if only for the convenience. He likes being human. He’s used to urinating, eating, even cutting his hair and beard with dull scissors.

“Remember Angie?”

Sam sighs. “Yeah, I remember her.”

“She gave excellent hair cuts.” Cas turns to Sam and smiles. “And shaves too.”

“Remember how she kept begging for someone to find some perm liquids so she could curl my hair?” Sam laughs. “One of those things you don’t realize you miss until it’s gone, a hair dresser.”

“Your hair is long, maybe we should try to find something to tie it back.”

“Nah, I’ll just hack at it with that scissors when we get back. You comfortable?”

“Yes Sam, you sleep. I will take first watch.”

Another trip to St. Louis for supplies. Just as Cas had predicted, they got to the edge of the city at dusk. Not wanting to get caught in a horde of Croatoans after dark, they find a good place to hide the pickup that still affords them eyes near the city. He holds his rifle a bit close and watches Sam snuggle into the seat, draping one of the blankets he had thought to bring with, and close his eyes.

He has grown very fond of Sam, even after the misunderstanding during Christmas. He likes to make a mental note of all the ways Sam reminds him of Dean so he can pretend that it’s him. At night, he lets Dean’s face fill up his mind, and when he’s positive Sam is asleep, he will masturbate and think of Dean. He can’t help but do it, even if it makes him miss Dean even more. He won’t tonight, not in such tight quarters. Not when he’s on watch.

Instead he scans the woods, occasionally looking up at the stars.

~

Sam takes the offered bottle of water from Cas and swallows half of it down before returning it. “Alright,” he whispers, “you go hit up that gas mart and I’ll get the coffee shop down the street. Meet back here in fifteen and we’ll make a list of what to take first.”

Cas nods. “Fifteen minutes.”

Sam waits until Cas is inside the gas mart before walking down the street towards the coffee shop. Drawing his knife, he peeks inside the dirty glass. Satisfied nobody is inside, he carefully lets himself in. Nobody has been in this place for a long time, there’s not even footprints in the dust on the floor. That also means no demons or Croates. Sam cautiously lowers the knife and maneuvers around the tables and chairs to behind the counter.

There’s no food left behind the counter, not even coffee. He finds a handful of spoons that he quickly grabs and lays out on the counter. He searches through the cupboards for anything of use, but only finds a few broken plates. This place was very clearly raided early on. Not so much as a butter knife in the joint. He sees the door to the back office and pushes through, raising his knife up again in case there is a back exit something came in through. 

The floor is just as dusty, but all the cupboard and desk drawers have been left open. Papers are scattered across nearly every surface. Numbers and order forms, nothing interesting. Sam reaches for a picture frame scattered in the mess containing a picture of two smiling men standing in front of the coffee shop holding a dollar bill. He tosses the frame back on the floor, listening to the glass break. Everyone’s lives have been reduced to scattered papers covered in dust.

He looks in every open drawer and cabinet, pulling out a few random things that might be helpful. He finds a remote to the television in the corner with batteries still inside. He finds a pile of magazines that Cas might like to look at. An old navy cardigan that would fit Cas and a stack of t-shirts bearing the logo of the coffee shop on the back ranging in different sizes. The small ones they could use as rags. He finds a card of bobby pins and sets them aside too, not exactly sure why they might need them but somehow they seem useful.

Sam hears a car engine outside and his stomach drops. He’s got to get out of here because now he’s left footprints in the all the dust. Eyeing the back door, he quietly slips into the alley and around the side of the building. He stops and peaks around the corner when he sees a blue sedan down the street in front of the gas mart.

Cas.

~

“Hello Squirrel.”

Dean rolls over at the sound of Crowley’s voice. “What now?”

“Come on, Dean, don’t treat me like some two-bit whore,” Crowley smiles. “I’ve come because I have a lead on Lucifer.”

Dean sits up from his cheap ratty bed. “Where?”

“Lebanon Kansas.”

“Let me guess, he is looking for the bunker because that’s where he thinks we are,” Dean shakes his head. “We might have enough to trap him inside it.”

“But if he hasn’t found it, then you going to trap him will lead him right to it, and you. Word has gotten out about a Lucifer and Michael resistance. Michaelfer. Lucifael. Yes, Lucifael. They’ll kill you on sight, you’d never make it to the bunker.”

“They’ll know there is enough knowledge and hoodoo in that joint to bring them down,” Dean says, slightly defeated. “What if Sam and Cas are on the way there? They’re walking into a death trap.”

“Lucifael is more interested in you.” Crowley says smoothly, obviously proud of his new moniker for the duo.

Dean shakes his head. “We have to get them with us, in our camp. Keep them safe.”

Crowley rolls his eyes. “Oh yes, sure. Capture two humans who have an impressive demon body count under their belts and force them into demon witness protection?”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Assign them a tail that does just enough to keep them away from Lebanon. Do just enough to keep them at bay but not enough to kill them.”

“I already have everyone looking out for them, an off-limits policy that so far, everyone seems just fine with following.” Dean sighs, rolling back onto his back. “We really must try to find better accomodations than this shit hole.”

“This shit hole is keeping you off Lucifael’s radar!”

“That’s a lame nickname, Crowley.”

“Burst my bubble and you break my heart,” Crowley pouts. “If you keep them at arms length, you give Michael an in.” 

Fucking hell, Crowley is right. “You and I both know that Sam and Cas won’t allow themselves to be put in demon custody. They don’t know I’m alive and I plan to keep it that way. If they find out and can’t cure me, they’ll kill me.”

“Not if you keep the upper hand. Cas is human now and probably not squeaking out any prayers as to keep himself hidden from Michael. Your brother and your former flame out there, vulnerable and all alone.”

Dean shakes his head. “Nah, you just want to have all the variables under your control.”

Crowley shrugs his shoulders. “Well of course I do, it’s the only way to stay ahead of the game. I’m fighting against my former boss and one of the only archangels left in existence. Of course I want to have everything under control. It’s not safe to stow them away in hell on the off-chance that Lucy wins and locks hell up tight. Can’t send them off to heaven for the same reason.”

Dean takes a deep breath through his nose. “They cannot find out about me being alive.”

“Mums the word.” Crowley smiles and zippers his lips. “I’ll put my top men on it. Now, another matter. Word is getting around that you are.”

“So? They say I’m a good lay.”

“Once they figure out that all your demonic fuck buddies look like Cas, they’ll lose faith in you. Either vary where you stick your meat or keep it in your pants or you’ll end up with more than a reputation as a good lay.”

Crowley turns around on a heel and leaves.

~

Cas found a paper and pen to scrawl a quick list of what they should take: several bottles of vitamins, three bottles of antibiotics that had fallen under the counter and were missed by former looters, a few first aid supplies, several sweatshirts and t-shirts with the arch on them, and other random items that might prove to be useful.

He clicks the pen and pockets the list when he hears a small thud behind him. His heart begins to pound and he foolishly realizes he left his rifle on the counter next to him, he could never reach it in time. He let his guard down and now Sam is going to be alone.

“Hey there,” a man’s voice says softly. “We ain’t demons or infected.”

Cas cautiously turns around to see two men standing inside the doorway of the gas mart, holding rifles but aiming them at the ground. “There ain’t much here, but I’d be willing to share.”

The man who spoke, dark long hair with a messy beard and a pink sweater, smirks. “Oh there is more than enough here to share. Say, you here alone?”

Cas looks the other man over. Chopped blonde hair and a shaven face, but just enough scars and knicks on his chin to indicate he’s been using the same razor for quite some time. “Why?”

“Ah, no reason,” the blonde says, putting his gun down and approaching the counter. “I mean, we don’t want to get ambushed and raided. Hard enough out there, us humans shouldn’t have to fight each other.”

Cas takes a deep breath and relaxes. Sam might not want to join up with them but there is no reason why they can’t help each other out. He reaches out a hand. “Name is Castiel.”

The blonde smiles and reaches out a hand, but the dark haired man rushes to Cas and plunges a needle into his neck. He tries to fight back but he starts to lose strength and his vision gets hazy. He slumps to the ground and feels the men dragging him across the floor.

“Get the gun,” the dark haired man shouts. “And some of those clothes he piled up. I’ve never been the arch.”

“Man, he’s got some fat on his bones. Must have food stashed nearby,” the blonde says.

Just before he slips into sleep, he feels himself hoisted into a vehicle and tires squealing underneath him.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Cas wakes up to a nightmare. Dean’s mojo is wearing thin and Sam makes a phone call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Pretty much everything under the sun: rape, torture, bondage, sex…it’s not an easy chapter. And things won’t get easy any time soon.

He wakes up in a very dimly lit room, marked only by a few select candles. Cas is on a bed, hands tied up down by his sides to something he cannot see. His feet are bound too. This room used to be someone’s bedroom. He looks at the moulding where the ceiling and the walls meet and the tacky ivy patterned border wallpaper directly underneath. There’s a frame across from the bed holding a few shattered remnants of the mirror that once hung within in. This used to be someone’s home, but by the smell of things, it’s been years since these sheets were washed. It smells like rot and feces and sweat.

Cas realizes he has to urinate and it fills him with dread. He doesn’t want to lay in a puddle of urine.

He hears men laughing behind the closed door. The two men who abducted him. Oh, he hopes Sam doesn’t think Cas abandoned him. He hopes Sam at least saw the car drive away.

The door to the room swings open and three men come in. Two of the men Castiel recognizes from town, the ones who took him. He looks to the third man, the one that wasn’t present before. He’s about the same height at Castiel, with light brown hair and brown eyes to match. He has the beginnings of a beard, indicating that at one time he had a razor. He is wearing one of the shirts Cas found, one with the arch on it. He doesn’t look dirty, doesn’t look like he does much with his hands. The two familiar men stand at the foot of the bed while the new man, sits down next him. Cas squirms in a lame attempt to get away.

“We took what we could get,” the blonde man says. “I know we all wanted something else but I didn’t want to put him in the shed until you got to see.”

The strange man smiles. “Oh I think we could still make this work, besides, we got plenty in the shed for now.” He turns to Cas and stares right through him. “Those eyes, fuck.”

Cas bites his lip, so unsure. Does he say anything? Risk angering the men? What are they going to do to him? Instead he swallows down all his questions and stares straight back into the brown pools, just waiting for them to go black. Please go black, he begs. He knows what to do with demons. Just go black.

“You’re looking pretty hard there, Castiel is it?” He turns back and the blonde nods. “We ain’t demons,” the stranger said. “Just men trying to survive in a whole new world.”

The stranger puts a hand to Cas’s cheek and he tries to pull away. The stranger grabs his chin so hard it brings tears to his eyes. “Is that how we are going to play this? I was wondering if you were going to fight me. I thought maybe you’d pretend to want to be one of us. We’ve had a few like that. ‘Oh mister, I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll help you, join you. I’ll make it so good.’ Now the last one, she was too weak. Gave up too fast. You are our first man though. Women seem to be drying up.” The strange man reaches towards the bearded man with an open palm. “Dave, give me the red one.”

Dave digs through a small bag Cas only just noticed he was carrying and produces a tube of lipstick. “Here ya go Todd.”

Dave. Todd. Cas commits the names to memory. But who is the blonde?

Todd takes the red lipstick and forcibly applies it to Cas’s lips, but Cas fights back just enough to get more of his on his skin than his lips. He may not have much experience being human, but he does realize what is about to happen and he knows it’s going to hurt. 

“Jack, bring me that bra, the one from the last bitch. I think purple will look nice on this one.” The blonde bends over and picks up a purple bra off the floor and sets it on the bed next to Cas. Todd begins ripping his clothing off, using a knife to help cut fabric away. Cas feels the sting when the knife scrapes his skin too hard or the rub burn of clothing being torn past his skin. It’s cold, very cold, without clothing, not even the bra Todd lazily puts on his chest and tucks under his back to hold in place can warm him up. Cas feels the knife slip under the ropes on his ankles and cut them away. No, no, no, no, no, he’s going to fight this. He kicks and kicks until the other men come to hold his ankles down.

Todd laughs. “So you are a fighter. Hmmm. My first man and a fighter. Hold him down boys.”

Cas presses his left cheek hard into the mattress to avoid eye contact, but that only opened up his neck to an assault of sucking. Hard sucking, not loving or sexual, but painful. He feels teeth and the warmth of his own blood. Todd lets up, spitting a mouthful of blood to the floor. He climbs on top of Cas, the others still holding his ankles. He sits up, straddling Cas, and begins to unbuckle his denim jeans. “Hold him open for me boys.”

Cas closes his eyes tightly, hears the sound of Todd spitting and braces for the intrusion, but it is a million times more painful than he anticipated. His eyes overflow with tears and he screams. He tries to wiggle his legs, kick the men, get Todd off of him, but the man continues his assault by thrusting as hard as he can while trailing the knife blade over Cas’ chest, drawing hot blood. In all of the million tales Metatron fed into his head, nothing could have prepared him for this. He hears laughing and grunting and the sting when sweat falls from Todd onto some of his wounds, but it all pales compared to the searing tearing. He feels like he’ll explode. He feels stupid and ashamed and a failure for getting so easily taken.

When Todd slips out of his body he shudders. Cas feels hot wetness where Todd pulled out of him and he starts to gulp air fast between sobs. He’s terrified, moreso than he’s ever been. The fear brings its own pain on top of the physical pain and he wants to fly out of this body so badly he could chew through his own wrists to get free.

“Well now,” Todd pants, out of breath. “That wasn’t half bad. I think we’ll keep him around for a while.”

“Shit, he fucking pissed himself,” Dave’s voice sighs.

“Knock him out and change the sheets dammit,” Todd spits. “We ain’t got much beds left and I don’t want my pretty little thing to smell like piss and shit when I come calling.” Todd trails his fingertips harshly against Cas’s numerous cuts and grunts. “Clean this shit up so he doesn’t get some blood infection and go bad. Maybe find him a nice pair of panties to go with that bra. Then get some fucking food made, it’ll be dark soon and I don’t want the fire goin’ and sending smoke out advertising our location to those fucking sick bastards.”

Todd stands up and Cas opens his eyes in time to watch him wipe his dick off with some filthy rag and button back up. Todd isn’t very well endowed and Castiel is surprised that it hurt as badly as it did. Does. Dave and Jack approach him with another syringe and needle and Cas welcomes the drug, knowing it will knock him out and give him a reprieve from the shame, hurt and fear.

~

He couldn’t run fast enough.

The car took off. By the time Sam found a vehicle that would even start, although it was nearly on empty, they had too big of a lead on him. Cas was gone, and not by choice. They fucking took him. Not Croatoans, demons. Demons who probably thought Castiel was an angel, who were trying to settle a score. What the hell would Crowley want with Cas? Unless he wanted to do the deed himself, Cas would have been killed right then and there with an angel blade.

Walking back towards the truck hidden just outside of the city, Sam knows what he has to do. He just hopes there is enough stuff left at the shack to actually make the call.

~

Dean looks at the map spread out before him, but he can’t think straight. His thoughts keep drifting back to hearing that Sam and Cas were last spotted not all that far away. He keeps thinking about how nice it would be to see them again, wishing he could apparate his black demon soul into a new vessel to spy on them without ever being seen. The same mark that made him a demon is the same one that binds him to this body. Shame.

“We need to head into St. Louis, try to pick up the scattered factions that haven’t picked a side.”

The room full of men and women---demons---looks up at him and they begin to murmur.

“We’ve got several pockets throughout the west, but nothing south. Lucifer and Michael have the east coast, which means they have numbers. We can’t compete with numbers, but we can compete with space. Land. We can take control of the middle of the country, prevent them from communicating with California, and take those fuckers out. Those who don’t side with us.”

One of his many blue-eyed fucks nods in agreement and he catches Dean’s eye. He tries not to take the same one more than a few times but this one, well, he’s fucking good. He mewls when he comes, just how he images Cas would.

“I’m sending several small groups out to LA to infiltrate the larger ones, stir up dissent, that sort of shit.” Dean makes sex eyes at his chosen partner for the evening. “I’m sending a group to St. Louis and then heading back to Kansas.”

“Why Kansas?” Crowley steps out of the corner.

“The Gates of Hell, where we shoved Lucifer and Michael in the first time. They won’t be able to resist the showiness of a showdown at that little cemetery. I’m sure they are far too eager to make a better stand there than last time.”

Crowley nods. “Good plan.”

“Alright, those of you going out, I’ll give you your assignments in the morning.” Dean eyes his prize and nods. “I’m retiring for the evening, not to be disturbed.”

Dean doesn’t notice Crowley disappears, he is all too eager to get back to his shabby suite—the nicest room left in the joint---and wait for his chosen prize to knock on the door. When he does, Dean does his best not to kill him when he slams the man against the wall and begins an assault on his neck. He rips off the demon’s clothes and sucks and bites at each nipple until it perks up under protest. Dean wants it hard and fast and good but not so much that he’ll forget to please the guy.

He disrobes the both of them and quickly puts the man on his back on the bed. The guy’s cock is small enough that what Dean wants to do probably won’t hurt as badly as he thinks, but big enough that it does a decent job of filling his mouth. He laps at the member in his mouth, getting an obscene amount of saliva on it to prepare it for him. He breaks long enough to get spit on his fingers before going back to lapping and sucking. He reaches back and gently breeches himself with one finger, and instantly his chest tightens.

This fucking demon doesn’t deserve that.

He quickly moves his fingers to the demon, making sure he is good and prepared, finger by finger. The demon moans and cries out and ruts up into his mouth , and it feels just on the side of romantic, so Dean bites just hard enough to put the demon back in its place. He leaves the cock with a dirty sucking pop and positions himself, plowing into the demon in one smooth motion. There’s nothing special about it, nothing emotional or new or different. It’s become as boresome as jerking off—its always the same. 

“Open your fucking eyes,” Dean commands.

The demon, who had been throwing his head back in ecstacy, looks at him. That’s when Dean melts. He sees Cas lying beneath him and he stills. This isn’t Cas and for once, it’s starting to feel stupid. Those feelings…he hasn’t fed in a while. There haven’t been humans around here for quite some time. He wants to scream and cry and run away, all things that the Knight of Hell doesn’t do. But he can’t keep it from coming into his head now. He’s fucking useless.

He pulls his limp dick out of the demon and rolls onto his back.

“Sir?” The demon asks. “Was I not good enough? I’ll do something else.”

Dean waves a hand. “My mind is distracted with all this Lucifer and Michael shit. I can’t focus.”

“Sir?”

Dean looks over to the demon who appears very much like a wounded puppy. Dean wonders who this kid was before. What the guy was thinking, watching a demon let another man fuck him senseless. How many people has this demon killed, all while the human sat in a cage in his brain and watched?

“You can go, don’t worry about it. You’ve served me well.” Don’t anger your team, he thinks. You need every body you can get.

The demon wordlessly picks up his clothing and leaves. Dean lays there, saliva cooling on his dick, and stares at the ceiling. If he doesn’t feed soon he’ll be stuck in this bed, an emotional blubbering mess, and then everything will be ruined for good. He won’t be able to protect Sam and Cas. Sam, it’s his job to protect Sam. He just wants to hug his brother again, wants to make the last four years disappear. Wants to settle him down somewhere safe and have beers and laugh about stupid shit while sitting on the hood of the car. He wants to hold Cas’s hand and kiss him under the stars and he wants Sam to make fun of them for it.

“Pants please.”

Dean sighs at the sound of Crowley’s voice. “What, here to tell me about my shitty plan?”

“No, I have news. Not good news, but news.”

Dean sits up. “What?”

“It’s about your little feathered friend.”

~

Sam says the last of the incantation and takes a deep breath. He doesn’t even know what he has to offer in return for information because he was so quick to do this that he didn’t think it through.

“Hello Moose.”

He doesn’t have time.

“Crowley,” Sam turns around to see the King of Hell standing in the middle of the shed. 

“To what do I owe the pleasure? If this is about Dean…I didn’t make him take The Mark, he chose that…”

“Why do you need Cas?”

Crowley tilts his head. “Castiel? I have no need for him.”

“You took him. It wasn’t Michael or he would have killed him on the spot.” Sam bites his tongue. “Is he some sort of pawn, you gonna trade him or something?”

“Why are you so concerned? It’s war out there you mammoth. Even if I wanted Castiel to trade or pawn or bang until the sun goes down, why in the hell would I even consider giving him back?”

Sam swallows. “Because you need me.”

“Bullshit.”

“Lucifer still wants me. Last I heard he’s only alive because Michael’s grace is keeping him that way. If I’m still destined to be Michael’s…”

“How do you know I’m not on Lucy’s side?”

“Because I know you, Crowley, and you are so full of yourself you could never pick sides. Now give me Cas.”

Crowley shrugs. “What makes you think I don’t have demons keeping an eye on you right now? From a distance? That I don’t guard you well enough that I can keep you alive and out of my hair, but safe from the other team?” He sighs. “I don’t have your precious former angel. Please hang up and dial again.”

Sam barely registered the snap of fingers until Crowley disappears from sight. The scream that comes from him is so deep and dark he’s wonders if he isn’t already possessed.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating: NC17
> 
> Warnings: more terrible things happen to Cas, including rape, psychological torture, physical torture, cannibalism, really nasty language, squicky stuff related to cannibalism and rape and torture, eek, this was totally a dream I had once hence the inspiration for this part of the fic.
> 
> Summary: It’s become clear to Crowley that, while he needs him, Dean has become a liability, and that there is only one way to get him back on board. Castiel realizes what the plans for him are, and Sam tries to find him.
> 
> *Sam accidentally said he was supposed to be Michael’s vessel…that was a typo. Also, I should have switched the Dean scene and the last scene, because Crowley comes to deliver the news to Dean after talking to Sam—which will be made clear in this chapter. Sorry about the little messes!

Dean starts to shake and he hears Crowley yelling at him about feeding and then he’s gone. Sam is desperate if he’s summoning Crowley to help find Cas. Cas is gone. He’s gone and if they don’t have him, who does?

Dean registers a slap across his face.

“You fuckin’ moron!” Crowley yells, having returned, and holding some poor woman by her hair. She’s on her knees, screaming. “You need strength, you’ve become a blubbering whiny mess and it’s completely unbecoming of a Knight of Hell.” He lets the woman’s hair go and wipes his hand on his trousers. “She’s all yours.”

“I’m not…”

“You are not who you need to be if you plan on finding him.” Crowley walks out of the door and leaves the human woman crying on the floor.

Dean doesn’t care now, doesn’t care if this woman wanted to be possessed to end her own fear and suffering. He kicks her in the face with his bare foot. He drops to his knees and pummels her, feeling her screams ring throughout each cell in his black souled body. She begs, she chokes on her own blood, and she sobs and it all feels so delicious. The guilt of beating a woman to death fades. However, as he stands to wipe fresh hot blood spray off his face, he realizes that he still feels angry about Cas and Sam. Perhaps one human wasn’t enough.

Crowley walks back into the room and tosses a rag at him. “Wipe that off your face.”

“What else did Sam say?”

“Your brother was so angry he couldn’t see straight. He was so convinced that I had Cassie.” Crowley sits down on the edge of the messy bed. “We need to find him.”

“I’m going to Lucifer and Michael.”

“Now do you really think they have him personally? No, probably some low levels are hiding him. They want control but they also want to keep a distance. So we continue to infiltrate and eventually someone will give up the ghost.” Crowley stands. “We take it methodical, slow, don’t let on that it’s bothering you and act like a real fucking professional. The moment it becomes an issue is the moment they know that this puny little human is your weak spot.”

“Why him and not Sam?”

Crowley shrugs. “I have no idea. Maybe Sam gave them the slip, he’s a very accomplished hunter while Cas is still trying to navigate in his human form.”

“He’s been human for four years,” Dean sighs. “They took him because he is Sam’s weakness. They really want Sam. Look, all our intel so far suggests that nobody really knows I’m who I am, that they think you are the ring leader. They took Castiel to try to get Sam. Michael must still want him.”

“So we follow Sam,” Dean says. He’s relived to have dropped his emotional surge, it helps him think clearly, even though there is still a tugging nagging at his core. “I want the word out—track Sam. Our insiders need to keep an ear out about Cas. I want to know the second anyone hears anything, no matter if it sounds like a rumor or not!” 

“Dean, you need more. One wasn’t enough, you are…”

“I’m what, Crowley?”

Crowley sighs. “Once we’ve thrown those fools back in the cage I’m going to do everything in my power to get rid of The Mark. You make a shitty demon.”

“You really think getting on my bad side is a good idea right now?” Dean clenches a blood-caked fist.

“Like you could do anything.” Crowley turns to leave the room. “Get cleaned up,” he shouts, “you have some orders to deliver.”

Dean is frustrated, yes. He’s frustrated that his Cas and his brother are in harm’s way, something he’s been trying to avoid this whole time. But the anger isn’t there, the emotion and love isn’t there. He feels possessive. His Cas. His Sam. As he cleans himself up (not using his powers, he needs to keep his feelings at bay), it strikes him odd. Doesn’t he love Sammy? Doesn’t he really love Cas? Why are those feelings gone? And why doesn’t it seem to bother him much that they are?

One thing is for sure, if he is going to be strong enough to defeat Lucifer and Michael, he needs to go all in. He remembers back to when Sammy was drinking gallons of demon blood—it’s all or nothing and hell if this isn’t a reason to go all. There’s no coming back from going that far deep into the pit, and he knows Sam will never forgive him for it, but at least he’ll get to live to resent him for it. 

He needs to go out into the field and kill some humans.

~

Cas wakes up to see small beams of light break through from between the boards on the window. While he slept, they covered him with a blanket to keep him warm. That must mean that they want to keep him alive. He sees a canteen on the nightstand but being tied up he cannot reach it. He feels the urge to urinate again, and considers doing so just to spite the men. The notion of spending how long soaking in progressively cooling urine is punishing enough to prevent him from doing so.

He tries moving against his restrains just to try to warm up, but he wakes up the pain. Stinging, sore from where Todd forced his way in. His wrists and ankles feel raw from pulling against the ropes. His back aches, his shoulders are on fire from being tied in the same position. He can feel that he’s still wearing the purple bra, although it’s digging into his ribs and back so they must have put it on properly while he was drugged. He feels fabric over his penis, probably those panties Todd ordered. Cas tries to stretch a bit to relieve some of the ache, but he just feels the small cuts on his torso break open again and gives up.

“There he is,” Dave walks into the room holding a plate with something on it. Food. Cas can smell it and he realizes just how hungry he is. Dave sits next to him and sets the plate on the nightstand, grabbing the canteen and unscrewing the lid. “We gotta keep you in good shape, drink.”

Dave tips the bottle so that Castiel can drink his fill. It could be poisoned or drugged but at this point death might be a reprieve. He doesn’t care. “Thank you,” he replies. He doesn’t have a plan yet, but it’s best to treat the man who lets you drink with some respect.

“Polite,” Dave murmurs, getting out a bucket. “I ain’t cleaning up piss and shit, so how are we gonna do this?”

Castiel looks at him pleadingly, knowing he won’t get his hands untied. Finally Dave unties his feet, holding a gun to his head, and has Castiel turn onto his side so he can deficate in the bucket. It’s humiliating, Dave taking care in wiping him clean…even though Castiel knows why he has to be so clean. It becomes even more awkward when Dave grabs his penis to aim the urine into the bucket.

Dave leaves for a few moments with the bucket, returning with another bottle of water. He sits back next to Cas, ties his feet, and reaches for the plate. “Hmmm, this is good shit.” Dave takes a bite. “You want?” he says while chewing. Castiel nods softly, not wanting to upset Dave nor wanting to look too eager.

“Fine,” Dave smiles. “She was a shitty lay but at least she tastes alright.”

Dave leans down and spits the half-chewed food into Castiel’s mouth. He instantly spits it back out, looking at Dave for long enough to know he shouldn’t have done that. Dave growls, grabs a piece of meat from the plate and shoves it in Cas’ mouth, clamping a hand over. “EAT IT.”

Castiel sits there with the food in his mouth. It’s salty and warm and he wants to chew but…Dave says ‘she’. Is this…is this human meat?

“Ha ha,” Dave says, having seen the panic in his eyes. “Yeah, where else do you think we get fresh meat in the city? This is the bitch who used to be here in this bed. Fuck, she was such a weakling. Died after only two weeks. So now we’ll take better care of you. Todd likes you for some fucking reason. We ain’t fags or nothing but he kept hollerin’ about how tight you were. Now eat.”

Castiel chews and gags but he eventually swallows. With hot tears streaming down his face, he is forced to eat seven more mouthfuls of hot human flesh before Jack walks in. “What’s going on?”

“I’m feeding our little fuckpet,” Dave laughs. Grease from his first bite of meat drips down into his beard. “Todd said to take him the bucket and some food.”

“He also said we get our turn,” Jack saunters over to Cas, unbuckling his belt. “Wonder if I can trust him not to bite my cock off when I make him suck it.”

“Probably, he isn’t desperate enough, not like that redhead cunt we had last year. At least that fucker didn’t bite me too hard before I snapped her neck. But hold the gun to his head just to make sure.” Dave hands Jack the gun, standing up to unbuckle his own pants.

Jack stands next to Cas, leaning forward so that his cock touches his cheek. Cas flinches, which brings a laugh out of both men. “Fucking fag, you are gonna suck it like a damned lollipop or I will shoot you. We are running a bit low on meat, that last bitch was fucking skinny.”

~

It isn’t until Cas’s panties are put back in place, the blanket is covering him up, and both men leave, that he turns and vomits onto the floor. The wretching causes his bruised anus to hurt even more, and his eyes burn with tears at the bile entering into his nasal cavities, but he can’t help it. He was forced at gunpoint to swallow Jack’s semen, and then Dave pulled out of him and forced a shit and blood covered cock into his mouth and made him swallow him down too.

They made him eat human meat.

Castiel panics for a moment, worried that if they come back they’ll make him eat his own vomit, but there’s nothing he can do about it now. He hurts, he’s scared and cold and he needs to be saved. He wants Sam to burst through that door any second, knife dripping with blood, and take him back to their little shack in the woods. He wants to apologize for everything, wants to admit he was a failure in protecting him. He wants to die, even though that means he gave up on Sam and he wouldn’t actually give up on Sam.

~

Sam triple-checks his machete before grabbing two gallons of holy water out of the pickup. He’s ready. He’s got every blade they had at the shack, holy water, pockets full of chalk and a few cans of spray paint for making devil’s traps, and pretty much any herb they had on hand to ward or call anything he can think of. What he really needed was his arsenal back at the Men of Letters bunker, but it was too unsafe to go back. He’s not even sure it hadn’t already been found by humans and raided to an empty shell.  
He’s going back to the scene to investigate exactly what happened. If Crowley is playing innocent, then maybe it really is Lucifer and Michael. But they would have sent regular demons, meaning they don’t have nearly as many powers and can be easily dispatched, if Sam can catch up to them first. 

~

The first thing Sam notices are the drag marks in the dust. They must have incapacitated Cas inside and dragged him out. Three sets of prints, so two men grabbed him. Sam walks over to the counter to see Cas’s handwriting, he had started to make a list of items to take. A quick look around notes that only one of the items—the shirts—are missing. Clearly these men weren’t trying to loot supplies out from under them.

Sam has to stop thinking of these things as men. They are demons, pure and simple. Demons who are only carrying out a job, so they are going to get sloppy. They are going to make a mistake. Sam just needed to be smart and figure out his mistake and then he’ll find them. There’s almost no gas left in any of the cars around here, so they either brought their own or they didn’t get very far via car. And they were driving further into the city, not away, meaning they most likely were stopped by several wrecks or old cars along the main highways through. He could still catch up to them. He just needs to keep going.

~

Dean hands the blubbering woman off to a couple of demons to have her possessed and flops on his bed. He feels the fear coursing through him. He especially liked how this ones’ arm bones cracked in his hands. But no matter how many souls he crushes, he still has the gnawing at his chest. He still feels loss and pain knowing that Castiel is missing from Sam. He could kill every last human, drink fucking blood, but he’d still feel for those two men. 

“Being a demon doesn’t make it go away you know,” Crowley’s voice sounds soft next to him.

Dean turns to see him seated on the chair next to the bed. “What?”

“Feelings,” Crowley spits. “When I was back on human blood, everything coursed through me, I found where it is, you know, inside. Now I can pull it back up much easier. I remember my mother, my son. I miss them. I do what I do because it’s my fucking job, but I still miss people.”

“And the pain?”

“It’s more a dull roar now, but I’ve had centuries. You’ve had four years.” Crowley stands up. “No word yet on your brother and angel?”

“Nope.”

“Well, once we find them we can get back to kicking Lucifer and Michael’s asses and then you and I need to come to a deal.”

“Here’s the deal,” Dean stands up. “You help me find Cas and Sam, and we fight this war, you can do whatever you want. Just leave us out. We won’t hunt you or gank your demons, but we are off limits. That’s all I fucking want.”

“Shall I draft the paperwork?”

“Do whatever the fuck you think you need to do.” Dean walks past Crowley and leaves the room.

~

He knows he should try to make nice, but he just can’t do it. Every cell in his vessel comes with a built in instinct to fight. Which is probably why everything hurts more. That’s why Jack beat him across the stomach with a belt after he found the vomit on the floor. He spat in Todd’s face when he came to see what all the screaming was about, which is why he’s getting his thighs smacked with a metal coat hanger. The men laugh when he cries out from each lash. 

Todd drops the hanger to the ground and pulls out a knife. He begins to draw little letters all over his chest with the tip, just enough to break the skin. Cas bites his lip more out of frustration than pain, and it doesn’t seem to please Todd enough, because he starts to carve deeper, twisting the blade with a flick of the wrist until Cas feels blood trickle down the curve of his sides and pool into the mattress. His body can’t produce any more chemicals to counter the pain and he starts to tremble.

“You must be starving, I heard you upchucked your lunch,” Todd says, wiping his blade off on the mattress next to him. “Answer me now.”

“N…nnnn…no, not hungry,” Cas spits out. “Water.”

“Ah, you want water? Fine. But you gotta earn it.”

Cas closes his eyes and wonders if there is anyone left to hear him pray for death.

 

*I’m assuming that Dave didn’t clean Cas up too well after using the bucket, not because I don’t know how gay sex works (the mechanics at least, I’m a heterosexual married woman!).


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Sam searches for Castiel, who is desperately trying to hang on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Continuation of all the bad crap that happened to Cas. I debated on continuing it but it does play into a very important plot point coming up so I kinda had to go there. But next chapter it stops, I promise!

Sam manages to track a smoke plume into some white picket fence neighborhood where all the houses are too close together and all the back lawns are too small for anything but a clothesline. It’s getting dark out and Sam can hear rustlings of Croatoans in the alleyways. The smoke has been gone for a good hour and all he can do it hide out and wait for it to appear again.

He picks a blue house with an actual white picket fence. Most of the windows are broken and the front door is missing—telling him it’s probably been scavenged already and less likely to be hit up again. Drawing his knife, Sam carefully walks inside, clearing all the rooms on the ground floor before moving up the stairs, stepping over what is practically just a skeleton wearing clothes. He knows trying to fortify the front door will just alert people that there is someone inside so he doesn’t bother. He quickly clears all the rooms before settling on what was very clearly a teenage boys’ room. He never had a room like this because they moved around from week to week, but he imagines it would be what he would have had. Shelves full of books and poster of the period table of elements on the wall.

After gently pushing the dresser against the door to prevent anything from coming in, Sam finds a blanket to carefully drape over the window before lighting a candle and settling on the bed with a jar of smoked venison jerky Cas made. He found the car this morning, the car he saw take Cas away. It was on the side of the road, gas tank empty, with no signs of Cas inside. These fucks have to be in the city, he thinks. Nobody would be so dumb as to stay in a major city anymore, so the demons have access to more resources. Since they don’t need to eat or drink, they can break into whatever mansions or high rise hotels and sleep in comfort and style while Lucifer and Michael burn down the rest of the planet. Just what the fuck do these demons think they’ll get? They’ve destroyed every potential resource there is. Human nature. Or demon nature.

Sam smiles at his own absurd thoughts, but he supposes they aren’t that absurd after all.

He lays down on the bed—which somehow still smells like a dirty gym sock—and begins to think of Cas. He doesn’t want to, but he pictures Cas being tied up by his wrists, toes barely supporting his weight, while some demons occasionally take an angel blade to him and wonder why the wounds aren’t glowing. He images them barely feeding him and only doing it out of orders. He imagines when they will reach out and give him the ultimatum. He thinks about finally giving up and saying yes to whatever Lucifer wants. He owes everything to Dean’s memory, though, so he has to get Cas first. Make some sort of deal to at least put Cas out of his misery quickly, if that’s the best he can do. He owes his every action now to Cas and Dean and he has to at least try to redeem himself this time.

~

Cas blinks his eyes open through the pain, seeing Dave perched on an upside-down bucket next to the bed, reading a book. His mouth is dry but trying to speak to ask for a drink of water is too painful. Instead he attempts to shift his weight more to his right side and cries out in pain.

“Well well well,” Dave says. “Who the fuck is Dean?” He grabs the water bottle and lets Cas drink until it’s empty.

“Who?” Cas coughs. He must have dreamt about him. He doesn’t remember his dreams since he’s been here, probably for the better.

“Dean,” Dave smiles. “I’m supposed to be going to fucking sleep because we got a long haul tomorrow and instead I get stuck here waiting for your ass to wake up so I can help you take a piss and get you to drink something so you don’t die.”

“Maybe I should die,” Cas resigns.

“Lost your fight already? But we’re having so much fun,” Dave leans over and rubs his thick fingers over Cas’s panties, tracing the outline of his cock. “Dean your fucking fag boyfriend?”

“I…”

“Yeah, you kept calling out his name in your sleep. Or moaning,” Dave laughs and removes his hand. “Nah, I’m not really in the mood. Todd and Jack are already asleep, we’re going out on a supply run tomorrow. See, after we nabbed you we kinda forgot about getting supplies.”

Cas takes three deep breaths, deciding his course of action. If he humanizes himself with his captors, he runs the risk of them confronting their homophobia and killing him just to prove they aren’t gay. If he antagonizes them, they may up the ante with the rapes and beatings and cause him more pain just to see how much will make him crack. He could try to gain their trust, but he doesn’t think it would work. He should just keep his mouth shut.

Dave stands. “I’ll come with the bucket and some breakfast before we go so if you yack it all up then you’ll starve for the rest of the day.”

He finds himself screaming into the dark when Dave blows out the candle and leaves the room. 

~

Sam wakes up to a pinch of daylight streaming into the room around the blanket he put up over the window. He hadn’t realized he had actually slept, and a night without dreams. It feels wrong to not have nightmares while demons are out there torturing his friend. Everything is wrong, and it’s been wrong since he was six months old. How stupid of him.  
He sits up and begins to rummage the room, looking for more weapons or supplies. Knowing it might be a while before he gets the chance, he moves to the window and pulls the blanket down, preparing to take a leak out into the lawn below, when he hears footsteps crunching their way down the road. He drops to the ground and out of view.

“There isn’t any gas left,” a voice says. “It’s been four years since they even made gas.”

“They don’t make gas,” another voice says. “They pump it out of the ground and refine it.”

“Fine, then it’s been four years since they refined it,” the first voice replies. “We’re gonna need to find us some horses to get around.”

“Not a bad idea,” the second voice says. “Where is the car?”

“We left it up the road when it died, took everything out of the inside.” 

“We need more containers for storing rainwater, too.” The first voice says. “We could really use some new clothing, something nice this time.” 

Sam waits until he can’t hear them anymore before he stands up and carefully moves the dresser from the door. Are these the men who took Cas? But why would demons care about getting around? They don’t exhaust so they can walk without stopping. But they don’t need water either, unless they are collecting it for a human. He slowly makes his way out of the house and hides behind a car while he thinks about what to do. He could go after the demons but they probably won’t talk and he’ll end up killing them in the melee. He could try to find where they are keeping Cas but he has no idea how many are there. Perhaps killing a few demons will get Lucifer out to give him the ultimatum, perhaps his best shot.

Sam sees them moving about two blocks ahead and decides to lurk behind. He can’t hear them talking but he can see them go into buildings together and come back out empty handed. He sees them pass around a canteen at one point and his stomach drops out of his body.

They are human. 

Just a bunch of guys trying to survive. Perhaps they saw the demons who took Cas and are staying clear of them. Maybe they will help him find his friend. The hope practically forces Sam’s heart out of his chest as he gets closer and closer to them as they enter an old clothing store. He waits until they’ve been in there for a good couple of minutes before he sneaks inside and hides behind a shelf. How can he approach armed men without looking like a thief? 

“This one right here,” one man says. “This one is really pretty.”

“Not enough lace,” the second voice says. “Whadda they call these things? Bears?”

“Teddies, man that would look fucking fantastic,” the voice whistles. “Pack it.”

Sam takes a deep breath and grabs the knife at his waist, making sure he can reach for it quickly should these men not trust him.

“Drop it fucker.”

Sam’s breath catches but he holds the knife tight. “Hey man, I’m just…”

“Drop it.”

He drops it and kicks it across the room. He slowly turns around to see a third man with a rifle pointed at his head. “Look man, I’ll just go you can have whatever is here.”

“Like you don’t think I saw you follow my men here? To rob them? You better stay on your fucking knees. Jack, Dave, we got another one.”

The other two men approach and Sam lets them search him, taking all the knives and gear he’s carrying. He keeps his hands up because he knows he can always get out of this. He’s gotten out of much worse more than once. He was possessed by fucking Lucifer for fucks sake, these shit-heels have nothing on him.

“I don’t want trouble, just looking for my friend—we got separated. I didn’t want to start a fight so I stayed back.”

“Your friend?” The man with the gun asks.

Sam nods, arms still up. “Dark brown hair, blue eyes. We were looking for supplies a few days ago and last I saw he was at the pharmacy down on Cooper Avenue. I was supposed to meet him there but he was gone.”

All three men exchange glances, but none of them speak. “Please,” Sam pleads. “He’s all I have left, my only friend, I am supposed to watch out for him.”

“I say we take him back,” one of the other men says.

“He’s just an extra mouth to feed,” the man with the gun replies, not taking his eyes off him.

“We still have a lot of the last one, plus I’ve seen quite a few deer lately. I like his hair.” The blonde says.

His hair? The last one? What the hell? One of the men smiles at the one holding the gun on Sam. “If you too had your own then maybe I won’t have to share. Alright, but I’m not helping you carry him.”

~

“Rise and shine!” Todd’s voice cuts through the air, waking up Cas in the process. Cas sleeps when they aren’t around because he hopes that dreaming will provide him some escape, although he isn’t dreaming much and when he does, it’s of this. 

Cas blinks his eyes open in the bright light as Todd rips open the curtain over the window. Why are they back so soon? He shifts uncomfortably as Todd rips the blanket off his body and exposes the angry red cuts and pale skin to the crisp air.

“We found you a friend,” Todd smiles.

Dave and Jack enter the room dragging Sam between them. Sam. No, not Sam. Not unconscious and helpless. Sam is supposed to save him. This is all wrong.

“This guy is huge,” Dave laughs, heaving Sam onto the bed next to Cas. Cas struggles against his restraints and screams through the pain moving his body causes as they strip Sam down to nothing and tie his unconscious body up next to his. No, no, no. Sam is supposed to save him. Instead he’s being tied up next to him. What kind of horrors await them both now? If only Sam could wake up now before they fully tie him, break free like a monster and kill them all.

Once Dave and Jack have Sam tied down tight, Jack manages to slip on a blue bra over Sam’s chest and pulls out a knife. Cas’s ears are ringing as if a bomb went off. He can’t hear them bickering about who gets to do what first, he just sees the blade in the air too close to Sam’s pale skin. Cas feels himself screaming even if he can’t hear it. He feels a gag go into his mouth and he bites at it. He tries to scream through it but he chokes on what little spit he musters. All he can think is no, not this. This is truly Hell.

Sam awakens when Jack slices into his chest. He screams at the pain and fights hard against his restraints. He takes a few punches to the gut before he turns his head to the side and makes eye contact with Cas. Cas feels every last whisper of hope drain his body as Sam’s face pales. Sam sees him covered in cuts and bruises, sees the women’s clothing he’s wearing. Sam knows exactly what has happened to him.

“This your friend?” Todd drawls.

“Fuck you,” Sam pants, wincing from the heavy breaths. Perhaps he has a broken rib, Cas thinks.

“Oh see, we will. This one here, now he is fucking tight. But if I keep sharing him with Dave and Jack, he’ll get bigger than the Grand Canyon. So he’s all mine now,” Todd straddles Cas and holds up something made of white lace. “Got you a special little something sweetheart.”

Cas doesn’t respond. He lets his head roll to the side as Todd cuts his current lingerie off and sloppily affixes the lace bra with a gown that stretches down over his naked crotch. Cas isn’t facing Sam, but he hears the other two men laughing, hears the sounds of zippers. Cas hears Dave warning Sam that if he doesn’t suck it good, then he’ll get fucked dry. Cas hears Sam gag and cry out, only to turn around and see Jack making fairly deep cuts into his chest while Dave tries pushing his cock into Sam’s mouth.

~

Sam feels like a bag full of broken lightbulbs. Every inch of his body was sore or on fire. He felt like he had been ripped in half when the men raped him. The cuts littering his chest sting and throb, and his ribs felt swollen and threatened to make it hard to breathe.

“Cas?” He whispers, throat sore from screaming. “Cas…”

It wasn’t lost on him that while he was taking his beating, Cas was nearly silent while the ringleader raped him. Cas was sniffling but refused to face him. He just wanted to hold his arms around his friend and make this all go away like a bad dream. He wanted Christmas Day back. He wanted the awkward post dry-hump meal and the hair washing at the shack in the woods. He wanted to never suggest coming into the city. He should have known better.

Dean would be ashamed.

“Just…don’t fight them.” Cas managed to say, turning to see his friend. The pain in Cas’s eyes was unbearable for Sam. The once-blue windows into his soul were now a misty gray. “It hurts more when you fight back.”

Sam was about to apologize to Cas when Dave bursts into the room with a bucket and a small plastic shopping bag. He sets the bucket down and produces two bottles of water and a small container. Wordlessly he helps Cas to drink his fill from one bottle before opening the second for Sam.

“I’m not drinking it,” Sam spits.

“Don’t,” Cas pleads.

“Drink it or you’ll end up dinner. That’s what happened to the last one.” Dave forces the bottle into Sam’s mouth and forces as much of the water into him as he can. He turns and opens the small container to reveal two large portions of still-warm meat. He goes to Castiel first.

Cas swallows before taking his first bite. Now he has a reason to try to stay alive, so that he can help Sam get free. Or at least lessen the blows. Cas dutifully chews and swallows, wanting it to be over. When Dave goes over to Sam, Sam refuses to open his mouth.

“Come on, we like you and want to keep you alive sexy,” Dave laughs.

Sam looks over to Cas and opens his mouth dutifully. He chews and swallows, now realizing how hungry his stomach is. The meat is warm and salty but far too chewy. Sam opens his mouth and receives another bite. He looks over at Cas, who nods gently. He purses his lips as if he’s about to be sick, but he manages to keep it down. He is fed the rest of the meat before given more water and offered the bucket. At first having Dave hold his penis so he can piss makes him sick, Cas’s silent nods assure him this is how it works around here.

“Well well well, he took to eating human meat much quicker than you did, princess.” Dave laughs.

“What?” Sam says nearly on a whisper. Human meat? This fuckers have been feeding Cas, and now him, human meat? He opens his mouth to yell but instead rolls his head to the side and vomits. The bile crawls up his nose and stings his eyes, and the chunks of meat feel like boulders as they work their way up and out. Sam was captured by cannibals once, nearly 14 years ago, but this…

“Look what he did,” Dave sighs. “Should we tell him what happens when he throws it up?”

Castiel shakes his head. Dave grabs his jaw and forces him to look at Sam. “Tell him.”

“You have to eat it,” Cas says. “What you threw up.”

Dave laughs. “Nah, not this time. I got something different in mind.” 

Dave produces a knife from his hip and slams the blade all the way to the hilt right into Sam’s calf.

“Now I made sure to miss the artery, but you better fucking eat tomorrow or I will kill you.”

“Sam, please just eat,” Cas’s pleas come on the tail end of a cry.

Sam screams when the blade is pulled out. He sees white stars and feels blood trickling down, hot and wet. The odor of metal mixes with the bile and meat and dried come and makes his entire head spin.

“Cas, it was my fault ok? I’m going to get you out of here,” Sam says. “I promise. I will do anything I can to save you.”

Sam slowly fades into a pain-induced sleep to the sounds of Cas crying.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Continuation of all the bad crap that happened to Cas but to a lesser degree. Sort of.
> 
> Summary: Someone comes to rescue Castiel and Sam, but are they now free or just being held in a different kind of prison?

Four days later…

“Please, oh please don’t, I’ll…you can possess me.”

Dean smirks to himself as the man behind him blubbers away, begging for his life. Dean inhales, feeling the life force of the man enter into his body and giving him that first, sweet kick. The doubt that settles in right before Dean ‘feeds’ again is fading as he turns around to drink in more of the man’s fear. 

The man is crying, tears pooling at the bottom of his rather larger eyes. He has stopped trying to free his wrists from their ties to the extremely heavy armoire that somehow managed to survive all these years without being used for firewood. Dean’s eyes lose the dark oil as he really looks at the man. He’s thin as rails, probably hasn’t eaten a real meal in months. His hair and beard are straggled and matted. He wears a large gold ring on a string around his neck, no doubt his wedding ring that no longer fits his finger. The smell of urine permeates Dean’s nose and he looks to see the man pissed himself.

Dean should feel sorry for him. For all he knows, someone out there is doing the very same thing to his Castiel or his brother. He sighs, knowing he needs to get strong to save them, but also worrying about what he has to do to make that happen. What a pathetic piece of meat, his only purpose now is to feed Dean and make him strong enough to save Cas and Sam. He drops to his knees and begins to pummel the body before him.

“You, you have no idea what I need to you, do you? That I’m only doing this to save people. Because no matter what the fuck your bible told you, the meek do not inherit the earth. No, the meek run and hide. They try, but in the end, they all end up here. YOU ALL END UP DEAD.”

“Sir?”

Dean stops, even though he doesn’t want to. He must keep up the appearance of control. He knows how demons must gossip. He stands and looks at himself in the wall-length mirror. Covered in blood spatter. It’s even dripping from his hair. Delicious. He recognized the voice of his favorite little fuck-pet, although hell if he could remember its name. Without turning around, he sighs and puts his hands on hips. “I was really hoping to wipe this blood off of me,” he says almost on a whisper, “but I suppose you could lick it off.”

“Sir.”

The usual drawl of lust (or at least fake lust) isn’t present in its voice. Dean immediately turns to see Crowley pushing the demon aside before placing his hands back into his perfectly pressed trouser pockets. “Take this,” Crowley kicks the body, “out of here Sean.”

“Its…” the pet starts.

“I don’t care.” Crowley snaps his finger and suddenly Dean is clean, not a trace of blood. “Dean, I have news. I only come to tell you because I know that if you found out in another way you’d do something stupid.”

“News?” Dean turns to admire himself in the mirror again. Have his biceps gotten bigger?

“Some of my footmen think they have found Moose and Feathers.”

Dean’s stomach drops. He turns to face Crowley. “Where? Where are they? Are they safe?”

Crowley holds up his hands. “They found a shack outside of St. Louis. It was warded up the ying-yang but they found a way to sneak in. They found a small pocket notebook in which Castiel had written some notes about some mundane survival crap.” Crowley waves his hand dismissively. “Looks like neither of them have been back in a few days at least. They came to tell me about the find.”

“No, we have to go. Find them now.” Dean becomes inpatient.

“I sent them back, could take them a few days.”

“Send more, send AN ARMY!” Dean bellows.

“And risk raising suspicions? Squirrel, my darling,” Crowley chides, placing a hand on Dean’s shoulder. “If I send every demon we have, and Lucifer smells them coming, it will be like sounding the dinner bell. We have to be secretive. You can’t put your brother and the angel at risk now can you?”

Dean shrugs Crowley’s hand away, feeling suddenly overwhelmed and very ignorant at the same time. He remembered the plan, keep them alive. He couldn’t bear for them to see him like this. Killing innocent people, eyes black. “They can’t know about me at all,” he murmurs.

“Yes, I told Moose that I took your body to destroy it so The Mark wouldn’t send you to hell, or some crap like that, I don’t even remember. He bought it.” Crowley sighs. “You need to stay put, as far as we know Lucy doesn’t know about you or our little command center. We’ll find them and keep any of Lucy’s men from getting near them.”

“You promise me or I will…”

Crowley holds up his hands in playful defense. “Don’t go all super Dean on me, my boys will keep them alive. You focus on gaining your strength to fight Lucifer. Stop fucking that blue-eyed boy and save your mojo.”

Dean punches his fist through the drywall and breaks a supporting beam.

~

Sam doesn’t remember a time when his body hurt this much. Not even when he was dealing with Lucifer in his head or detoxing off demon blood. Not only does he feel each ache and pain, each broken rib and deep cut, each burn and stretch, but he swears he feels all of Castiel’s pain too. His friend, who hasn’t spoken a word since his first day in this place, who stares up at the ceiling when Todd comes to rape him, or cut him. Or when Dave comes to feed them and help them shit in a bucket. Sam stopped trying to talk to Cas once he noticed that every word he said brought tears streaming down Cas’s face.

Sam feels a fever coursing through him, covering him with sweat that only cools in the winter air at night. He knows he has an infection from one of his wounds, his leg judging by the heat and swelling he feels, and that unless they give him medication and clean his wounds he will die. Maybe he’ll see Dean again. He thinks that wouldn’t be so bad. He remembers the one time he got to see heaven—and remember it—and he could do that. Even if it wasn’t real.

Cas murmurs refusals in a fitful sleep. Sam hears creaking, the sound of someone walking up the stairs. Just one of them this time, probably coming to force more human down his throat. Hopefully that’s all. Every single time they hold a knife or a gun to his head and force their cocks in his mouth he feels ashamed that he doesn’t just bite it off. He wouldn’t want Cas to have to take the brunt of all the men again or left here to die alone. Cas manages to eat it, doesn’t even gag anymore. Not that he displays eagerness or pleasure, but he willingly takes the food. Sam just can’t get over eating a human being and fights every bite. Maybe if he had eaten he wouldn’t be this sick and his body would have something to help fight the infection .

Sam hears shouting downstairs and the sound of the person turning back and going down the stairs, having never reached the top. A reprieve. Sam’s eyes close against his own will and he knows his body is forcing him to rest. He doesn’t fight it this time.

~

Cas wakes up with a start. Loud noises downstairs. He looks to see Sam asleep, not responding. He looks pale and is drenched in sweat, but his labored breathing assures Cas that he is still alive. More noise, loud thumps and bangs. Then a man screaming out in pain. Croatoans must have gotten in the house. Or demons. Cas pulls against his restraints but knows he won’t get free. Something starts to climb the stairs and his chest fills with panic and relief at the same time. Someone or something is coming and he is going to die.   
A strange man appears in the doorway, but he doesn’t look infected. He’s covered in sprays of blood, but he isn’t holding a weapon or panting and out of breath. He approaches the foot of the bed and pulls a small blade from his back. That’s when he sees the black eyes. A demon. How fitting, that a demon should be the one to kill an angel.

“Are you Castiel?”

Cas swallows before deciding that either way, he’s probably dead. “Yes.”

The man uses the knife to cut at the ropes around Cas’s ankles, doing the same for Sam. When he looks back up at Cas, his eyes are human again.

“Believe it or not, we have been sent to rescue you.”

~

Cas doesn’t remember passing out. He wakes up feeling the warmth of blankets on his body. Real blankets keeping him warm. He blinks his eyes open and sees himself alone in a small bed, covered in a clean blanket. He feels his body clothed under the blanket. He raises his wrists in front of his eyes to see bandages, crisp and white. He can still feel the sting of deep rope burns and cuts underneath. That’s when he remembers the demons that saved them. He looks over to his left and sees Sam sleeping soundly, covered in a blanket. He’s still sweating but at least he sleeps. His wrists are equally dressed.

He rolls onto his side, hangs his head over the edge of the bed, and vomits. Each heave of his body cracks open scabs on all of the cuts on his back and chest and he feels trickles of blood touch his skin.

“Hey, this one is puking his fucking guts out,” a voice says. 

“Humans, so weak,” another voice says.

Cas wipes his mouth and rolls back onto his back. He sees two men—demons. One has blonde hair long enough for one of those California surfer-types. He’s wearing torn jeans, sneakers and a bright pink t-shirt with a boat on the front. Couldn’t have been older than 21 when he was possessed. The other is an older man, with a slight hint of grey in his short black hair. His grey 3-piece suit is torn and stained.

“Sam, he needs medicine.” Cas croaks.

The blonde hands Cas a bottle of water. “We gave him some antibiotics,” the demon says as Cas drinks. “We found clothes for the both of you, washed you down and dressed any wounds you had. We, uh, had to get up close and personal for a lot of them. Nice work. Amateur, but for humans they were good with a knife.”

Cas hands the demon back an empty water bottle, body threatening to get rid of what he drank. “Why?”

The black haired demon speaks from his perch on the window sill at the other end of the room. “Our employer said that we were to keep you safe, healthy and fed and away from his enemy. We’ve been told that’s all we can say.”

“We are to be very handsomely rewarded for our efforts,” the blonde smiles. “I can’t believe we actually found you. The rumor was that you both were long dead.”

“Who is your employer?” Cas sits up, but he instantly feels dizzy and collapses back onto the bed.

“Ian, get him something to eat,” the blonde says. “If you need anything…”

“I need to speak with your boss.”

The blonde smiles. “Name’s Orion. Don’t try to get away, you two are my payday. Now we promised to feed you, keep you alive, but I won’t hesitate to get creative if I need to.”  
Cas waits until Ian has returned with a plate of stale crackers, a can of almonds, and a few more bottles of water before he allows himself to really take in a full breath. The first almond touches his tongue and he wants to cry it tastes so good. He chews, reveling in the crunch. The food he had been eating didn’t crunch. It was oily and warm and salty. It was meat.

Cas forces himself to swallow the almond long after the crunch is gone and it’s merely a grainy paste clinging to his teeth. He forces himself to eat 5 more, knowing that he must eat or he’ll faint trying to get to Sam’s side. Once he’s finished his meal and drank half a bottle of water, he throws off his blankets and swings his feet over the edge of the bed. He instantly misses the warmth of the blanket but notices only now that there is a small fire burning in a woodstove across the room. He’s dressed in brown pants with way too many pockets down each leg and a short-sleeved grey shirt. The clothes are stained but they smell clean, probably washed in a river somewhere.

He stumbled towards the doorway of the bedroom and falls to his knees. He removes the bandage from his right wrist and bites hard onto the sensitive flesh until blood drips out from around his lips. Waiting for blood to pool on the floor around him, he removes his mouth from his wrist and lets the blood pour. He hears Sam stirring in his sleep and knows that if he awakens, they’ll come back to check on him.

It doesn’t take him long to draw the devil’s trap on the floor in his own blood. He bandages his wrist again and crawls to Sam’s side, feeling too weak to walk. He manages to sit on the edge of the bed and look at his friend’s pale, sleeping face before he slides into the dark.

~

“Cas, why the hell would you do that?” Sam sits up in his bed, chewing on some almonds. Where the hell did these guys get almonds, he thinks. “They got us out of that fucking hell hole, cleaned us up, fed us. You told me they gave me medicine, and I feel better. Why would you hurt yourself to make that trap?”

“They are demons, Sam.” Cas sighs and closes his eyes. After Sam woke up to Cas sleeping on his legs, he managed to get him over to his own bed. “They don’t want to help us. They are just keeping us alive so that someone else can torture us.”

“Could it get any worse that it was?” Sam mutters, taking another handful of almonds and pouring them into his mouth. 

He doesn’t want to think about it. The men dressing him in ladies undergarments. Forcing him to suck them off, fucking him raw with no lubricant or preparation---which was surprising because it had to have hurt them as well. He swears he can still feel them all over his skin, inside his body. He tries very hard not to wretch at the memory of the meat he was forced to eat. These almonds are almonds and only almonds, he chants a few times in his head. He looks over to Cas and knows that his friend got it much worse for longer. He watched the leader punch him in the gut so hard he couldn’t catch his breath. Sometimes he wouldn’t rape him himself, but use whatever was around to do the job.

Sam can’t help thinking that he is partly responsible for creating the world that turned those men into what they were.

“You said they won’t tell us who they work for, right? How is this going to get them to open up?”

Cas sighs. “Maybe I’ll be lucky and they’ll kill me.”

Sam tries to swallow his food and not cry. “We need to figure out who would want us alive and treated halfway decently. If this person is using us as bargaining chips for Lucifer and Michael, meaning we can talk our way into siding with him.”

Cas huffs and rolls over onto his side, but not before Sam catches the beginning of a wince on his face. “How can you be so optimistic?”

“So I should have just let you die when you slit your wrist back in the smoke tent? I should have lost myself in the bottom of a bottle after Dean died? Fucking hell, Cas. After every single thing you’ve ever been through, or seen in your life, you are going to throw in the towel now? You can’t do that to me, not now, not after what we’ve been through. That’s not fair.”

“What’s the point?”

“What’s the point, Cas? Seriously? The point is that we are fucking Winchesters. This is what we do. We are going to get back on our feet and figure out how to stop this. And maybe, just maybe, someday Dean will forgive me for letting this happen to you and we can live happily ever after or whatever.” Sam slumps, exhausted and queasy. “So you don’t get to bitch about all this horrible shit we went through. Keep it to your fucking self.”

Sam closes his and hears Cas obviously trying to cover up his sobs.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam takes on the role of big brother for Castiel. More is revealed about who the demons who saved Sam and Cas work for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reminder: Garrett is the name of the demon that looks like Cas that Dean likes to "sleep with".

Two weeks later…

He’s broken.

Sam hears the whimpers and knows. Cas did not take becoming a human very well. Emotions, love, loss, fear. Pain. All these things he didn’t have to feel as an angel. Granted, he lasted a lot longer than Sam would have initially given him credit for. Maybe it was that couple of months after Metatron stole his grace gave him a little taste for it. 

He can’t take the whimpers and cries coming from Cas, so he gets up and crawls into the small bed next to the sleeping angel. Man. Nearly five years and he still thinks of him as an angel. He wraps him up in his arms and holds his sleeping, thrashing body. It started about two nights after Orion and Ian brought them here. Each night they fall asleep in separate beds. They wake up with Sam holding onto Cas so tight after his nightmares that his arms ache. Sam would never admit to his own nightmares, how he can still feel what those men did to him. He wants to throw up and scrub his entire body with bleach until he feels clean again. 

Holding Cas together at night is the only thing keeping him from falling apart.

~

Sam wakes up to the smell of toasted bread. He doesn’t open his eyes, but smiles into Jess’s hair. Not her hair. It’s not her. It’s Castiel. But why is he smelling bread? He opens his eyes to see a strange man standing at the foot of Cas’s bed, holding a tray with real plates and real food on them. Steaming food.

“You must be Sam Winchester and Castiel,” the man says. 

Sam just stares at the man with an open mouth. He has dark brown hair, a five o’clock shadow and deep blue eyes. He looks enough like Cas that Sam has to look to see if the man is still in his arms. Then the smell hits him again.

“Who are you?”

The man’s eyes go black. “I was sent here with some things for the two of you. Including breakfast.”

Sam eyes the man cautiously. “Let me guess, from an employer we aren’t allowed to know the name of.”

“Sorry, we were told to protect you.” The man sets the food down on the small stand between the beds. “I take it you are Sam?”

Sam nods. “Is that bread?”

“It is. And eggs. Got them from a camp that manages to raise chickens. And the sleeping man is Castiel,” he nods.

Sam takes a plate, not bothering with utensils. The salty egg hits his tongue and he doesn’t even bother to contain his delight. “Can you at least tell me why we are so valuable? Why not just level with us?”

The new man shakes his head. “Sorry. I like my rank and I plan on keeping it.”

Orion and Ian walk into the room. Orion looks at Cas, who is sleeping, and back at the new man with a smirk on his face. “The rumors are true,” he mutters.

“Rumors?” Sam asks.

Orion shakes his head. “Nothing really. Demon stuff. Garrett here was ordered to check in on us and bring some more things. Apparently we suck at keeping humans.”

Cas stirs and slowly blinks his eyes open. He sits up suddenly at the shock of a new demon in the room. “Sam?” He calls, looking to his friend.

“It’s okay, Cas. Just brought us some food. Here, eat this,” Sam hands Cas the second plate with warm bread and eggs. “It’s good, you need it.”

Cas sits up and eyes the new demon suspiciously. Without looking at the plate, he slaps it out of Sam’s hand and sends the food crashing to the floor. “I’m not eating until I speak with your boss.”

Garrett, the new demon, shrugs. “Ain’t gonna happen.”

“Then I’ll starve to death. You are supposed to keep me alive, right?” Cas sounds tired and weak and Sam wants to pin the man down and shovel the eggs off the floor and into his mouth. “Then tell Lucifer his brother wishes to speak with him. That he’s decided he wants in.”

Sam looks over to Cas in shock. “In?”

Cas looks to Sam, his eyes sunken and noticeably grayer than usual. “I’m in. I’ll give my body up for possession. I’m done fighting against them.”

“Cas, you don’t get to do that to me. Your life isn’t just about you!” Sam sets his food down and stands up, approaching Garrett. “You better start talking.”

Garrett’s eyes go black again. “Or what?”

Sam doesn’t back down. “I know how to make demons talk.”

Before he can continue his negotiation with the demon, the floor shakes. He hears cracking of wood runs his way back to Cas. The house is shaking like there is an earthquake, and he can smell smoke. He hears the demons yelling over the noise to each other but he doesn’t give a shit. He turns to Cas and grabs his hand. “WE GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE.”

Cas sits like a stone on his bed. “I’M NOT GOING.”

“OH THIS ISN’T THE TIME FOR YOUR FUCKING PITY PARTY,” Sam says, grabbing the man and hoisting him up. “RUN.”

Sam manages to push Cas out of the room and to the top of the stairs at the end of the hall when he sees Ian running up to them with a silver bowl in one hand. “THIS WAY” he yells, escorting them down the stairs and out the front door where they meet Orion. Orion quickly guides them all into an old car and takes off down the road.

Sam looks back and tries to see what happened, but the house is engulfed in flames. It is only then that he notices there is no more earthquake. He turns to Cas, who sits panting next to him, staring out of the window. “What the fuck was that?” Sam asks, to nobody in particular.

“That was Michael,” replies Orion from the driver’s seat. “If Garrett keeps him distracted long enough, we have enough gas to go for about six hours.”

“Michael? You mean?” Sam looks to Cas and back to Orion. “Now would be a good time to tell us who you really work for.”

Orion looks nervously over to Ian in the passenger seat before glancing back at the road. “There’s a small faction trying to stop Lucifer and Michael…”

“Orion!” Ian hisses.

Orion ignores him. “This small faction wants earth for themselves because they don’t like Lucifer’s management. He’s trying to gut the planet, kill all the humans.”

“But isn’t that what you want?” Sam asks, continuing to look nervously at Cas, who is entirely too calm for comfort.

“No, if all the humans die, we will eventually die. We feed off you. Once you are all gone…” Orion trails off. “We need to take them back to base.”

“Absolutely not,” Ian replies. “We were given strict orders. If Lucifer found us out there, he’ll trail us back to base and then we are all fucked.”

“Garrett showed up last night, it was his stupidity that led Lucifer to us. Now that Garrett’s back there getting his ass killed, we’ll be fine. We can get a head start.”

“How do you know he doesn’t have his guys following us?”

“I’m not going to risk my ass for these two humans, I don’t give a shit what that dick says.”

“Then why not just leave them on the side of the road, Orion?”

“Because if we ditch them then we have both sides after us. Lucifer has numbers and he’s strong, but Crowley is scary smart and really loves his venegence.”

“Crowley?” Sam says. “Crowley is the leader of your little rebellion?” Sam takes a deep breath. That makes sense, why they are being kept alive. Crowley always liked Sam and Dean. And Cas. “You have to take us to him.”

“Not a chance,” Ian replies. “Orion, you have to keep your fucking mouth shut.”

“No, you don’t understand. We didn’t know you were working with Crowley. We,” he glances over to Cas, “we want to be on his side.”

“Humans want to work for Crowley?” Ian scoffs. “Am I the only thing in this car that isn’t a complete idiot?”

Cas takes a deep breath, eyes fixed on the passing buildings and burned out vehicles outside the window. “You obviously need us alive, and the only way you’ll get that is if you take us to him. I gave up my wings and my grace for less. I’ve slit my wrist for less. I have no problem killing Sam and then myself to stop you.”

“We can’t take them to him, we were told not to,” Ian whispers to Orion.

Cas looks to Sam. “Promise you won’t try to stop me?”

Sam’s jaw drops, shocked. He can’t think of what to say… 

“LOOK OUT!” Ian cries out.

Orion slams on the breaks and the vehicle spins around completely in the dry dust covering the road. When they stop, in front of them appears the other demon, Garrett. He smiles eerily. Orion and Ian get out of the car, and Sam drags Cas out as well.

“How are you not a total goner?” Orion asks, stopping ten feet short of his dusty cohort. 

“It wasn’t actually Lucifer, just a minion,” he laughs, shaking the dust from his dark hair. “But yeah, they were working for him. They found you.”

“How do we know this isn’t just some trick to keep us on your side?” Sam asks, trying to push Cas’ intent to murder him out of his head. “How do we know that you aren’t trying to turn us against the other side?”

“Would you just shut the fuck up already?” Garrett says. “I mean, you talk constantly but you never manage to really say anything do you? I like Castiel, he’s quiet.”

“And he looks just like you,” Orion mutters.

“What?” Cas asks, suddenly interested in the conversation.

“We’ve all heard the rumors about him,” Orion continues, talking to nobody in particular, “and then Garrett shows up and practically confirms it.”

“And you show up with your orders from Crowley, sure, but I knew you were casing the place,” Ian adds.

“I wanted to make sure you aren’t one of Lucifer’s double demons,” laughs Garrett. “If I really wanted to kill Sam and Castiel I could have brought an army.”

“But you didn’t want to risk it getting back to Crowley,” Orion replies. “Or worse, Dean. Because we all know he really runs the show now.”

Dean? Sam couldn’t have heard that correctly.

“If those two humans are out of the way, I keep my place. I get to overhear things, things that are very valuable to Lucifer and his friend Michael. And so far they have paid me handsomely. Not to mention that the rumors about our leader and his…preferences…are true. I’m not even into that sort of thing but hey, it’s actually pretty good. Might as well have fun while I’m double crossing the fucking moron,” Garrett says. “It was great, in fact I became so trusted that he and Crowley sent me to deliver that little care package to these two humans. I wonder how he’s going to feel when I tell him that the idiots Crowley sent killed Sam and Castiel. He’s still got just enough human left that he’ll be blinded by that stupid emotion and I can slip in and take him out.”

Sam doesn’t have time to process what he’s heard before Garrett lunges towards them. Out of instinct, Sam pushes Cas back and takes the brunt of Garrett’s body against his, crashing to the dusty pavement. Sam feels a crack in his chest, telling him that he’s cracked a rib, and his breath is knocked out of his chest. Sam struggles to keep Garrett’s hands from closing around his neck before Orion and Ian and helping pull the strong demon off of him. Sam tries to prop himself up on his elbows but the pain is sharp and he feels his shoulder give out as he tries. Fuck, he’s dislocated the thing. He tries to call out for Cas but can’t get enough breath into his lungs. He hears cries and grunts, concussive sounds that could be punches or body slams against the concrete.

“Sam?”

It’s only when he hears Cas’s voice had he realized that at some point he had closed his eyes. He opens them to see Cas hovering over him, blocking out the sun. There’s blood dripping from his lip and his face is pale. Neither of them had yet to fully heal from what those men did to the them, and Cas’ hunger strike hadn’t really helped. They make eye contact for only a moment when Cas falls to the concrete next to him. 

“He, said, Dean,” Cas pants.

Sam forces himself up to check on Cas when he sees Garret standing angrily in the middle of the road. Orion is pacing around him, covered in dirt and disheveled, while Ian’s body lies still in the ditch nearby.

“I’ve known Ian since we made our first deals together back at WOODSTOCK!” Orion spits. “All we ever fucking wanted was to make our quotas and get our rocks off when the hellhounds collected. We sure as hell didn’t want this apocalypse. You know what happens if Lucifer wins? He destroys ALL of existence, every last bit of it. INCLUDING US. Hell goes right into oblivion. I don’t want to disappear.”

“You’re a demon, I’m a demon, we lie.” Garret replies. That’s when Sam’s vision comes into focus and he notices a makeshift devil’s trap drawn with chalk. Where did Orion get chalk?

“Think about it,” Cas huffs, pushing himself into a standing position next to Sam. “Lucifer and Michael are my brothers. They have seen everything that has ever been, and stood over it all. If they make it all disappear and destroy everything, they only stand to gain an end to the suffering. Even now, they rebel against God. They will never be free from our Father as long as this planet still exists.”

“What was so bad with what he had under Crowley?” Orion asks. “Sure, we had to deal with hunters, but there was a balance. Most people didn’t even know we were real, let alone bothered us. Those that did either wanted to deal or exorcise us and well, isn’t that just the price we pay for freedom?”

“What would it take?” Sam asks.

“Sam,” Cas hushes.

“No, Cas. Garrett, what would it take?” Sam painfully manages to stand up but fails. “To help us. Tell us what you told Lucifer.”

“What the hell could you give me?” Garret scoffs.

Sam swallows, the pain in his heart now equaling that in his ribs and shoulder. Now is his time to bluff. “I can have Crowley pardon your crimes. For some reason, he has a soft spot for me. I could make it happen.” He turns to Orion. “This is only going to work if you take us back to him.”

Orion looks at Cas and then to Sam. “Seems like the only demon I ever trusted is dead,” he gestures to Ian’s body. “Might as well take a hand at trusting humans.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Orion takes Sam, Castiel and the captive back-stabbing demon Garrett back to Crowley. Things don’t go exactly as planned and learning the truth sends Sam and Castiel falling into that dark murky space where right and wrong are not so black and white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: This chapter just references previous rape/torture. There is also a story about Noah and the Arc that I bastardized and made up details to fit the story. I was raised atheist, I have no idea the real story anyway 

Cas feels done. That’s the only word in any language he can think of. He wants to end the boring nature of being done but knows that he has to at least get Sam into a situation where he can survive without him. He doesn’t know what that looks like. Going to meet Crowley might be it---Crowley always had a soft spot for Sam, but even if what Orion said was true, that could only keep Sam alive for so long. Eventually Crowley will take his pound of flesh from the Winchester.

He feels Sam shove a bottle of water into his hand. “Here, drink up.”

Cas continues to stare out the window of the car and watch the dead remnants of trees and bushes pass by on the edges of the highway. It’s only been a few hours since they shoved Garrett in the trunk of the car and Sam asked Orion to talk. Orion didn’t say anything different from what he said before, but he got very quiet when Sam asked about Dean. Sam asked three times why he had heard them talk about Dean. Cas doesn’t remember hearing Dean’s name at all, and momentarily wonders if Sam’s blood infection has rebounded.

“Dude you need to drink and eat something,” Sam shoves something in his lap. “You nearly passed out on the road back there.”

Cas internally sighs and brings the water to his lips. He swallows half the bottle in one gulp and looks at what is in his lap. A small worn baggie with what looks like homemade crackers. He cracks a tight-lipped smile before eating them. He feels his body scream with pleasure at the small amounts of food hits his stomach. Its these types of feelings and sensations that he loves about being human. The way his human body responds to food, or a good sleep, or warmth when it’s cold. The way it physically responds to sexual pleasure. Or the way it responds to pain. It’s not the scars or the way he rips open tearing the old wounds whenever he has a bowel movement. It’s the memory of being out of control, the memory of the pain and how inescapable it all was. Even his happy memories are tainted by pain. Pain because he would re-live them in his head during the rape and torture, or pain because they all had to end. 

“Did I tell you about Noah?” Cas turns to Sam.

Sam shakes his head slowly. “No.”

“Noah was a fallen angel, actually. He fell after falling in love with the human he was charged to protect. In the beginning, we were all assigned to random humans from their births to their deaths. God would give us specific directions in how to orchestrate their lives. In the beginning, all of us angels became very attached to our charges. Noah fell in love with his charge. A man named Aanon. Yeah, the tale about a wife and children were made up by humans. God never had a problem with sexual orientation. Homophobia was built out of fear by humans. Why, I will never understand. Anyway, Noah fell in love and wanted to stay on earth with Aanon. So, he did. When my brothers and sisters found out that Noah didn’t want to come home, they tracked him down with the intent on bringing him home and killing Aanon so Noah would have nothing to bring him back. They planned on locking up in heaven’s version of jail for the rest of time. Taking away all of his assignments. See, God trusted us to follow him, but we created our own rules and our own system. Deviate from expectations and you would suffer greatly.”

“When Naomi, Raphael and Michael—who were best of friends once—found Noah, they ordered him home. Noah had refused and professed his love to Aanon. They were so touched by his love that they decided to grant him a sort of reprieve. However, they were not accustomed to keeping secrets from father. Michael was the one who told God what happened and begged for forgiveness. It was the first time God realized that he couldn’t control his angels. Somehow, being in contact with humans, they had adopted some of their free will, or at least that’s what he thought. So he began to orchestrate the flood.”

“Michael found some allies in the lower order of angels to go warn Noah that the great flood was coming as a punishment from God. Those angels helped Noah and Aanon to plan the arc, but instead of filling it with animals, Noah began to gather all of the other lower order angels who were sympathetic to his cause. But the arc was never a ship, it was the code name for a small part of heaven that they had protected for everyone to hide during the flood. The plan was that the angels would gather everyone together and ascend them all to that location and hide. See, after word of his falling spread, many of us wanted to rebel against God. I had even contemplated it. I’m not an arc angel, I was never given any special responsibilities. Just my charges. Even they weren’t important, just people. Almost like busy work. But I still believed in my father and his plans for everything. So I didn’t go. But there were a lot of my brothers and sisters on that arc. Then they started to save humans as well.”

“This made God furious, so he sent the flood, not knowing about the arc. He wanted to punish the angels for falling. He destroyed everything. Meanwhile, Noah and Aanon and all of his followers were hiding in heaven. After the flood, Raphael found out what had happened. Knowing the mercy God bestowed upon Michael, he told father. He made Raphael kill them all. He was made to kill Noah last, make him watch his beloved Aanon perish for his sin of betrayal. Raphael once told me that Noah knew it would end this way. He knew that he would watch his love die, but that he had to try. Trying was the ultimate way Noah was able to profess his love for Aanon, and he felt that giving up proved him a coward.”  
There is a long pause. Sam and Orion don’t speak. The only sound in the car is the hum of the tires over the cracking pavement. Cas finished the rest of his water and crackers before speaking again.

“You know the rest. Raphael rebelled again and had to be killed. Michael used and abused humans and ultimately sucked an innocent soul into the cage. Naomi used me to destroy a human she felt too powerful. She didn’t want to watch what happened to Noah happen to Dean, not because she never liked him, but because it brought back too many memories for her. Dean’s no angel, but he had a mission all the same. God has been gone for years. Sometimes I wonder if he’s dead, or if he left and decided to start over with another planet in another galaxy. Or if he was even real. If he really loved his creation he wouldn’t have just stood by and let this all happen. I have to believe that we are now alone.”

“After I learned that Metatron had killed Dean, I kept thinking about Noah. How he fell. He truly believed he could save Aanon. But in the end he died a horrible death and his soul was erased from existence. I was assigned to Dean. I remember meeting him when he was just a few days old. I took a vessel of a hospital nurse and went into the room where he was kept. He reached out for my finger. I saw how happy he was when he found out he was going to be a big brother. I saw how sad he was when your mother was killed. How hard he tried to protect you. You didn’t have an angel assigned to you, and with the prophecy I never understood why. It wasn’t until Dean went to hell that I figured out why. Dean was your guardian. No angel could have protected you the way he did. He loved you.”

“What about you?” Sam asks quietly. “He loved you too.”

Cas chokes on a sob. Sam gently puts a hand on his knee and watches him cry. Castiel thought he was done, he felt done. But here he is feeling again. He misses Dean. He misses his brothers and sisters. He misses the father he never knew. He misses everything.

He doesn’t notice that they’ve made it to the city, or that the car has stopped in front of what used to be a luxury hotel. It isn’t until Orion opens his door that he looks up and sees Crowley standing there with his hands in his pockets.

“Holy fucking hell.”

~

Dean can’t see straight. He punches a hand through what little drywall is left in his room but still he sees red. This fucking idiot brought Sam and Cas here. They are here in this building. He can’t breathe, not that he has to.

“I didn’t tell them about you,” Orion says.

“You brought them here!” Dean yells.

“I had to bring you Garrett once I learned he double crossed you, tried to kill them. There is no way of knowing who else might do the same, I couldn’t trust anyone else. Who else did Garrett tell? Did he tell anyone about Sam and Castiel?” Orion sighs, hands on his hips, and looks at his feet. “I had to think on my feet and do my best to do what you charged me with, keeping them safe.”

Dean falls to his knees, his whole body feeling weak. His energy is gone, he was about to feed before they showed up. “They are not to know about me.”

“I understand, sir. Crowley requested that we keep them on the third floor. We are working to make sure they cannot leave the rooms on their own.”

Dean hangs his head. “My brother will get out of there.”

“Perhaps you need to tell them,” Crowley’s voice enters the room as he does. “Right now, they are a weakness. If they know you are alive…”

“They are a liability.” Dean says calmly. “They will try to stop me, cure me, or kill me.”

“So what exactly do you suggest we do?” Crowley asks. “Kill them? You made me guarantee their safety.”

“Lucifer probably still wants his chosen vessel,” Dean smiles. “We could use Sam as a bartering chip.”

“You don’t actually suggest…”

“Oh fuck no, but we could make him think it. And it won’t be believable unless he is still alive. We make a deal, get Lucy so excited to have his one true vessel that he lets his guard down. Then we take him out. Sam and Cas will help us do that, we might need them. They have the advantage of being immune to traps and wardings.”

“Then what you twat?” Crowley spits.

Dean steels his jaw. “We kill them.”

~

Dean isn’t prepared for the way the air feels when he opens the door. He sees Sam first. He looks so different. His hair is long over his shoulders, a beard beginning on his face. He’s thin, having lost some of the muscle mass Dean remembers. Sam doesn’t approach, he doesn’t even appear to be breathing. His eyes fill with tears but they don’t spill over.  
He looks over to Cas and that’s when he feels it. Pain. Cas’s blue eyes blink too fast and his hand fly to his face too quickly. Dean remembers how his grace feels in his veins. He swears that he can feel Cas’s heart beating in his chest. Dean knows he is weak and if he’s not careful he’s going to ruin everything. So he lets his eyes turn black.  
“We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

~

Cas can’t let go of Sam’s hand. He’s sitting on the edge of the oldest, moldiest mattress left in the world, listening to Dean talk of Lucifer’s plans. He talks about how he’s told Crowley that they are going to use Sam as a bargaining chip and how Crowley thinks Dean is going to kill them. He listens to Dean talk about how Sam and Cas need to help him escape and cure him. Cas can’t stop holding Sam’s hand and staring into Dean’s eyes. They look so green and so…normal. He wants to reach out to him and touch him on that arm. He wonders if his handprint is still there after all these years.

“You just expect us to believe you?” Sam says, gripping Cas’s hand all the tighter. “Dean, I…you are a demon.”

Dean shrugs. “It’s the Mark, Sam. I don’t want this. Do you know what I’ve had to do?” Dean punches a hole in the wall.

Cas flinches. His palms sweat and he wants to hide. He’s internally embarrassed by his bodily reaction to the outburst.

“I was hiding in an old cabin in Montana until about six months ago. Crowley came and convinced me I needed to step up. I made him swear that no matter what, you two would be safe…”

“Safe?” Cas stands up. “Demons burned our last camp to the ground. I got kidnapped by human beings who…they did things that make me wish I was dead. They did those things to Sam. I failed to protect either one of you.” 

“Cas, you can help me now. Look, Crowley’s convinced that I’ve gone full-on black eyes but…if I don’t feed…I can fight it.”

“Feed?” Cas asks.

“Whatever Dean did, he had to do,” Sam says. “Don’t you get it? He’s asking for our help. He’s trying to stop Lucifer and Michael too.”

Cas shakes his head. “How…how in control are you?”

Dean looks to the ground. “I can be. Look, I’ve done absolutely terrible things, but you know I will see this thing through. Once Lucifer and Michael are gone, for good, you can kill me.”

“Dean…” Sam begins.

“I’m going to have to do some really terrible things before this is all over. I can’t be killed, that much is clear. But I can be cured, and then killed. Remember the trials, Sam? You have to promise me,” Dean begs. No tears.

Sam nods solemly. “Yeah.”

“Cas?” Dean turns to his friend. “I…I have so much to say.”

Cas bites his lip, absolutely terrified of every emotion coursing through him. He thinks he’s having a nightmare, or a dream. Maybe he’s dead and this is his hell. He has to watch Sam fall for his brother’s line. Lies spit from a demon’s tongue. He has to watch the man he thought he loved become this snake who’s smiles spit poison into Cas’s own soul. Or at least his charade of a soul. Just because he lost his wings doesn’t mean he just gets a soul.

“This isn’t about us, it’s about saving what little of humanity is left.” Dean sighs.

~

After all this time, Sam cannot stand the idea of not sleeping next to Cas. Back in that tin shack they slept so close. It was comforting, after years of sleeping in the same room with his brother on the road, to have Cas so close to him. Sam needs to have Cas close. He doesn’t like that Dean gave them separate rooms and finds himself pleading with the demons guarding him to let him see that his friend is okay, something about nightmares and the screaming getting on Crowley’s sensitive nerves.

Cas looks up when Sam walks in and goes to lay down on the bed without so much as a word. They both curl up on the mattress next to each other, Sam wrapping his long arms around Cas as he rests his head on Sam’s chest. It’s an intimate position, moreso than anything they have done before. But Sam needs comfort close. He needs Cas. Well, no. He really needs Dean, but Dean terrifies him.

“I’ve waited so long,” Cas whispers. “I’ve wanted him back for years. But that’s not Dean. Not my Dean.”

Sam hums in agreement and closes his eyes. “Dean can’t control what he is, he needs us.”

“Demons will say anything to get at you,” Cas murmurs.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A plan goes into action to save the world, but at what cost?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry this took forever! I’ve been struggling with an aspect of the story and the last episode gave me some mythology that helped me along. Sorry for the delay, I needed inspiration!  
> Warnings: spoilerish for 10x20, flashbacks to rape/torture/non-con

Two weeks later…

Sam listens to Dean detail his plan. The blood rushing through his ears almost drowns him out, but he fights his physiological reaction to hear every word. Dean wants to use Castiel to help get every angel that will listen to join their cause—if there are any left. Then they are going to have Crowley pretend to double-cross Dean and give up Sam to Lucifer. Sam will then help Dean, Cas, Crowley and some of Dean’s other demons into Lucifer’s compound—which turns out to be an old shopping mall in Colorado—and they would finally take out Lucifer once and for all. Dean had sent a group of demons to the old Bunker and they were able to bring back a truck full of research, all the stuff that wasn’t destroyed or burned when demons ransacked the joint a few years back. Everything they found pointed to the Mark being stronger that Lucifer and Michael. Sam listens and can’t argue with this part of the plan. It’s what he would do.

He looks over at Cas and sees that disturbingly blank expression he’s had since they arrived. He still has nightmares and Sam still convinces their room guards to let him go into his room at night and quiet him down. Except now he disappears when the sun rises. He misses Cas. Of course he started to lose Cas before they got here, back when those assholes took him.

Dean dismisses them and it’s only then that Sam notices how tightly his hands are gripping the table. He’s trying to keep it together for their sake, trying not to go black eyes and kill them. Before he realizes what he’s doing, he reaches out to hug him.

“No, Sammy, not a good idea. I’m barely holding it together here,” Dean laughs nervously.

Sam knows he looks like Dean just kicked his dog and he knew it hurt his brother, but it also felt good. Dean was feeling again. Human feelings. It gave him hope. Maybe he could cure Dean like he tried to cure Crowley during the trials. Maybe it would work, especially if Dean was weak. Of course he’d have to feed to take down Lucifer, but they could trap him and keep him tied up long enough to grow weak again. Then the blood might work.

Sam nods, swallows down the lump in his throat, and follows Cas out into the hall. He feels hot tears touch his cheeks but he just takes a deep breath and keeps walking. Cas slips his hand into Sam’s and intertwines their fingers. For a man who stopped caring, the gesture meant the world to Sam. It was the only earnest and conscious contact he’s had with anyone he cares about in weeks.

Cas pulls Sam towards his room and Sam follows, honestly not liking being alone in this place. Once they are locked into Cas’s room---the demons charged to guard them smirking to each other—Cas turns around and pulls Sam into a kiss. It makes Sam feel ten ways of wrong but at the same time it’s comforting and he hasn’t had comfort for years. So he kisses back. He lazily opens his mouth and let’s Cas explore with his tongue. The movements feel perfunctory, like a rehearsed dance, but it’s nice enough to begin to lull his brain into the soft sensations.

It feels like an hour, and he doesn’t remember honestly when they moved to the bed, but Cas is tucked into his side and repeating the same flicks and nibbles and massaging his lips over Sam’s in the same rhythm. Sam pushes Cas away and looks him in the eye.

“I just want to make you feel wanted and safe and loved,” Cas whispers.

“You can’t replace him,” Sam whispers back, suddenly missing Cas’s mouth on his. “He’s a demon and we’re going to have to kill him. He’s gone.”

“Please, stay here,” Cas begs, tucking himself back up against Sam and resting his head on his chest. “You want to.”

Sam wraps his arms around Cas and suppresses the urge to kiss him again.

~

Three weeks later in an old apartment building just outside of Colorado Springs…

Everything is lined up. They go tomorrow to try to get Sam back. Everything is going to end, he just doesn’t know which ending will come to be. The one where they kill Lucifer, remove the Mark and kill Dean? Or the one where Dean gets his taste of power and rules the world, sucking the life out of the very last blade of grass and leaving nothing but rubble? That’s what the angels said, those that even entertained a meeting with him. None of them wanted to join in, none of them saw a hope in any of it. One even offered to sneak him back into heaven so he could avoid purgatory when he gets possessed.

Cas doesn’t seem to care much either way. He’s failed at so much. He tried to comfort Sam but Sam rejected him. He’s tried to get excited about this mission and get his hopes up like Sam, but he can’t. He’s dead. He walks out onto the rickety balcony of his room and looks down. How easy would it be to jump off.

“You were the only thing keeping me from taking that First Blade to my throat.”

Cas turns to see Dean standing in his room, rubbing his hand on the back of his own neck and staring at the floor. Cas sighs and turns around to face the stars again. “Am I supposed to thank you for that?”

“No, man. I’m thanking you. I would inject small amounts of your grace. Like a high. It made me feel human again. It wasn’t until Crowley showed me how to feed did I realize how weak I was. Now…I don’t want to be a demon anymore. But I know that I need to be to make it through this fight. I’m scared Cas. I don’t want to fail.”

Cas grips the railing and watches his fingers turn white in the faint pale glow coming from the room behind him. He hates that Dean makes him feel again. He hates the hope and longing that creeps into his chest as he hears Dean’s shoes step closer to him. He hates the way Dean’s hand feels on his arm.

“Castiel,”

Cas turns and locks eyes with Dean. Amber, not black. Full of sadness. This could all be a trick, Dean does need to feed to be strong enough for the mission tomorrow. Dean might be here to kill him. Not that it really matters, if he doesn’t die feeding Dean he’ll die trying to save the world.

Instead Dean pulls him into the room and off the balcony and cups his cheek in his hand. Cas can feel Dean’s whole body trembling and wonders what’s happening. A demon shouldn’t react so…so much like a human. Dean is far too weak to fight.

“You need to get your strength,” Cas whispers, leaning his head in towards Dean.

Dean let’s Cas’s forehead fall onto his cheek. “I can’t, I don’t want to be that. I don’t want the last memory you and Sam have of me to be that thing.”

“Dean, Sam’s waiting for us. For you,” Cas puts his arms around Dean. “We can’t leave him there.”

“I know. Orion and the others have some humans downstairs but I don’t want to. It feels wrong.”

“It’s only wrong if you kill them. Once we win, you can set them free,” Cas pants. “Or you could use me.”

“Never,” Dean replies.

Cas moves his head and nuzzles into Dean’s neck. He could take it all back, convince Dean to release the humans downstairs and just stay here with him forever. He wishes he could feel a pulse against his lips as he kisses Dean’s neck. He wonders if they aren’t already dead and this is his heaven. Or hell.

Dean grabs Cas’s face and crashes his mouth over his. Cas completely lets go. The sensations overwhelm his human body as Dean kisses him. Dean runs a hand through Cas’s hair and swallows the moan Cas makes into his mouth. Dean holds Cas close and moves the both of them over to the moth-eaten bed. When Dean lays Cas down, a pillow of dust rises. Dean instantly climbs on top of Cas and rubs his entire body against his. Cas feels Dean’s hardness against his hip and he cants his hips up to meet it. Dean takes a hand and shoves it up Cas’s shirt. Cas claims Dean’s lips again as he feels Dean’s hand climb up his ribcage. His thumb runs over a nipple and Cas bites Dean’s lower lip.  
Dean whimpers against Castiel’s lips and slams his hips down into Cas, hurting him. Cas turns his head to protest when he feels wet heat on his chest. Dean stills and looks at Cas, eyes black. Cas reaches down and pulls up his shirt, seeing claw marks in his flesh and blood coating Dean’s fingertips.

“I’m…I’m so sorry Cas,” Dean stands up swiftly, shaking his head. “I…”

“You need to feed, Dean.” Cas stands. 

“This might be the only time we…”

Cas walks over to Dean and pulls off he own shirt, revealing his wounds. He watches Dean, the man he has always loved, fall to his knees and lick the wounds. There’s something erotic about this black eyes, and Cas tries to loose himself in a trace of giving. He lets Dean throw him on the bed and pin his arms above his head. He listens to Dean tell him that he’s just going to rut against him because he doesn’t want to hurt him. He doesn’t bring up the rapes. He kisses and bites his neck and chest, enough to leave bruises. Cas let’s his eyes roll into the back of his head and concentrates on the pain, on feeling it. He lets himself cry out, but he doesn’t fake it. Dean needs this to save Sam tomorrow. This is the only chance Castiel can have to be with Dean, and he’s going to give him everything he has left.

He catches Dean’s lips again as he ruts against his cock. He feels friction and heat and hardness as Dean moves hard and fast and tight against him. He feels blood on his lip and cries into the kiss. Dean clamps down harder on his wrists and twists over the raw skin, causing Castiel to gasp and curse. Dean grunts and suddenly Castiel is lost. It all feels so good, he wants so much more. He needs more. 

Dean slams his body so hard against Cas that it knocks the breath out of him. He’s gagging for air and coming in his pants at the same time and it hurts. It scares him that he wants more, but he does. He mentally begs Dean for more, harder, faster, while he tries to catch his breath but he can’t. He wants his hands free, let my hands free so I can touch you Dean. So I can have more. Closer. Forever. Let me go, Dean, he begs as everything goes dark. Let me go.

~

Dean paces the floor. Cas is still fast asleep on the bed where he left him. He isn’t waking up. He still has a pulse, but Dean fears he went overboard. He shouldn’t have let Cas feed him, but he was so weak and Castiel’s energy was delicious. Instead he got too rough and Cas started screaming at him, yelling to be untied. A flashback to whatever happened in that house where Orion found him. Dean knew they were tied up and tortured, but he can only now assume that those men raped Castiel and Sam.

Despite wanting Cas to wake up and needing to make sure he is okay, he enjoys the familiar taste of Castiel’s energy. He knows Cas came by the smell hanging in the air, and he knows he did too by the stickiness in his pants. It feels like Cas is part of his soul. If he even has one. He knows he needs to go and feed before they go, and that Cas needs to be strong for tomorrow too. They need a human to help break devil’s traps or weave through wardings that might be put up. And one that knows Enochian and how to draw all the sigils that exist helps. Someone that Sam can trust, and someone that can help him kill Dean when everything is over.

“Dean?”

Dean turns to see Castiel has woken up. He rushes to his side. “I went too far, Cas.”

“Go….feed…” Cas says tiredly. “I’ll be okay. I wanted you, it’s okay.”

Dean hears Cas’s pulse loudly in his head and tries to ignore it. “I don’t want to leave you alone.”

“I’m fine, you need to get strong for tomorrow. I love you. Please, I need to rest for tomorrow.”

Dean leans over and plants a long, soft kiss on Castiel’s lips as he slips back into sleep.

“I love you,” he whispers as he leaves for the pen of humans below.

~

Sam wakes up to the sound of dripping somewhere in the room. Today is the day, if he kept count correctly. They had to have Sam here long enough so that Lucifer and Michael would be convinced that it was truly a double cross by Crowley and not a set up. He hopes today is really the day, because he cannot take much more.

One thing they did not count on is the fact that when Castiel pulled him, soul-less, out of hell, that Lucifer had no vessel. Since he’s been topside he’s been vessel-hopping. He possessed Sam the minute Crowley brought him in, but Sam is too strong. He was prepared this time, and he knew that Lucifer was just an angel in the end and could be cast-out, a lesson both Crowley and Gadreel taught him a long time ago. So he cast Lucifer out. It took a few hours to fight him, but he won. Now Lucifer is possessing some young woman who looks a little too much like Ruby did for Sam’s comfort and is rotting the body quickly. He muttered something about killing Sam first, but then all the qualities of Sam’s meatsuit that he liked would be dead and then what would be the point?

Sam is chained to a wall in the gym of a high school, resting his weary body on his knees and hoping Dean and Cas come soon. They haven’t been feeding him and the last time they brought him water was yesterday.

He opens his eyes as he hears footsteps. Michael and Lucifer saunter up to him. Michael carries a bottle of water. When the approach, Michael opens and lets Sam drink his fill.

“Don’t want me dead?” Sam gasps once he’s drunk the whole bottle.

“Far from it,” Michael says, throwing the now-empty bottle across the room. “We may have a way for Lucifer to have you all to himself so that you cannot cast him out.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Oh really.”

“Grigori.”

Sam cocks his head. “I’m not following.”

“They are fallen angels that can steal and feed off human souls. Make you weaker. Something that myself and dear Michael cannot do,” Lucifer speaks up. “They can draw out a human soul for years by putting you into sort of a trance. Makes you weak enough for me to slide right in but still keeps those aspects that I need from you.” Lucifer smiles.

“Missing a few more teeth today Lucy,” Sam laughs.

He doesn’t appreciate the kick to the balls.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Castiel confront Lucifer.
> 
> Sorry for the delay in updating, I got married in June and I spent all my free time preparing for that. Sorry!

The energy pulsing off of Dean is electric and terrifying and erotic. Cas feels himself caught between a smile and shudder when Dean approaches him. Eyes black, demeanor strong. Cas doesn’t want to think about how many humans had to die last night.

In the end no angels answered his prayers. Maybe they didn’t want to reach out to him, or maybe they were all dead. It doesn’t really matter, he supposed. There is almost no way that this is going to end well. There will be more death. There is so little left to lose that it would be almost better to give up, but then they let Crowley turn over Sam and Dean won’t let the world end without trying to save him. Nobody could have really stopped him either.

Cas arrived in the small building just in time to watch Dean slice off a demon’s finger. The demon doesn’t scream but looks obviously annoyed---he is just a lower level pleb who cannot regenerate body parts.

“Sammy’s being held in the Planet Gymtastic in the mall there,” Dean says, flicking the severed pointer finger across the small room. “But apparently Lucifer and Michael called in someone to guard over him, someone special. Something about having to scrub all the sigils off the walls. That’s all he knows.”

“What is the plan?”

Dean shrugs. “We got a mess of them that are going to make a commotion at the front gates at high noon, hopefully there are enough demons to distract security and we can get into that gym.”

“We can’t let him go,” Cas nods.

“Nope, you’re gonna excorise him and I’ll feed on what’s left,” Dean smirks. “Fuck, you are adorable.”

Cas winks, not feeling disgusted at Dean’s black eyes for the first time, and walks over to the demon. Somehow even this feels okay, it’s for good reasons. This poor human has nothing left.

“Exorcizamus te omnis immundus spiritus…”

~

Dean knows this will fail. He counts the number of demons that stand guard, that go rushing towards the front gates at high noon. He is incredibly strong, but he can’t face Lucifer and Michael alone. His only real hope now is to kill Sam and Cas quickly and painlessly and let Lucifer finish him off. There’s got to be at least a hundred demons already out there and more keep going. He looks to the east side of the ridge and sees more of his men approaching the mall—a little insurance he didn’t even tell Cas about. Something Crowley suggested. Sure, it’s obvious, but it makes it look like they were trying to flood the front to get in the side.

“Shit,” Cas mutters. “Who the fuck is that?”

“Plan B, I didn’t tell you because I was afraid if you were caught they’d torture it out of you. Or possess you and read your thoughts.” Dean turns to Cas, forcing himself to let the black stay on the surface. This is going to be all the more impossible when he feels things. The only humans around are Cas and Sam and he won’t feed off of them. “Let’s go.”  
Cas checks his thigh holster and strap around his chest filled with Devil’s Trap bullets. He also checks the Angel Blade on his other side, a “gift” from Crowley and very well the only one left in existence. Dean knows he has a couple of cans of spray paint in his pack for drawing traps and a first aid kit with water and food for when they find Sam. Not like it will come in handy, but Cas insisted on packing it. 

Dean leads Cas to fire escape where the manage to stack just enough debris to get up to a rickety fire escape. They manage to get onto the flat roof and quickly make their way to a flat door in the roof. Dean goes in first before poking his head back up and nodding to Cas. Cas follows Dean on their hands and knees through a catwalk of suspended metal complete with twisted aluminum foil air duct pipes and blue internet cables. Cas worries the metal won’t hold but it does. He sees cracks in the drop ceiling just below them, waiting for one to give them a glimpse of Sam.

Cas doesn’t remember moving down out of the ceiling or into a large gymnasium with treadmills and elipticals along the walls. But here he is. He looks at Dean and wishes he could still reach into his soul and feel it. He remembers stitching it back together in hell, he remembers all the times he reached in to heal his wounds without Dean realizing he was reaching much farther inside than needed. He misses the love that hides deep in Dean. It felt different than the love he felt in Dean’s kiss, but then this isn’t the same Dean. But he knows Dean is under those black eyes and that they will both die trying to save Sam so he might as well get as close to that Dean as he can before they are dead. Cas doesn’t have a soul after all.

“He’s supposed to be here,” Dean growls, pacing frantically through the room in front of Cas. “Right here.”

“Maybe we were tricked,” Cas whispers. He had accepted before they even got here that this wouldn’t end well.

“No, you weren’t tricked. I didn’t anticipate you coming for Sam, but doesn’t matter. I’m prepared.”

Dean and Cas turn towards the voice.

“Sam?” Dean asks.

Sam steps towards them, eyes black and blood dripping from his chin. “No. Well, yes. I’m only using his body and powers and crap like that.”

“Sam, if you can hear me…” Dean continues.

“Oh he can. But this time I made sure he was weak enough. Needed to keep him alive so I could suck down some demon blood, use his powers. Last time Sam did fight me. Hello   
Cas, brother.”

Cas feels his heart drop to the floor. “Lucifer.”

~

Dean knows this is the end. He can feel Cas’s fear rolling off of him in waves. It’s delicious. Dean could get drunk on this, and he wants to. He wants to possess Castiel wholly. The darkness in his body screams out to his King, Lucifer.

He can feel Cas’s fear, but not Sam’s. Sam is empty.

“Where is Sam?”

Lucifer laughs. “I found someone to drain him. He’s in here, but he’s so weak that he can’t fight me back this time. One of our other fallen brothers. Gregori.”

“Liar, we killed them all,” Cas says, fear floating thick around him. Dean’s drunk now. Might as well be.

“So we thought. You know there is no way out of this. I won.”

“You lost, Lucifer. You know what happens when you win, you destroy everything. You can’t live without humans, your demons will die. You will destroy earth—it will all be gone. Including you. As if you never lived. You are really willing to go down with the ship?”

Lucifer shrugs. “Why not? Dean, you still have a chance. Join me.”

“I’m already a demon you dumbass,” Dean smirks. Although he doesn’t feel like one, the sadness flowing off of Cas. The loss of hope. It shouldn’t affect him like this, he is a demon. He’s recently fed for fuck’s sake.

“No, not fully. I mean yes, you are technically dead. But I can smell it in you.” Lucifer walks by and comically sniffs. “Grace.”

Dean feels his body scream. He’d throw up if he’d eaten anything in the past five years. “Cas’s grace…”

“Ding ding ding! I could smell it when I walked in. You somehow got a hold of Cas’s grace when he gave up the wings and you mainlined that like a heroin addict. Sure, you didn’t have enough to get rid of the black eyes but you have just enough to make you almost human. Which leaves you with a choice. Now, I can kill you and Castiel, or I can take his grace from you and you can live out whatever time we have left feeding. Fighting. Side by side with your dear brother Sam. Go out with family.”

Sam. Dean dares himself to look up into Sam’s eyes. He knows Sam is in there fighting, he know that whatever Gregory, Greggor, whatever the fuck it is. If he’s going to go out, he wants to go out with Sammy.

‘Don’t do it.’

Dean swallows. He has no idea if that’s Sam peeking through or if he’s imaging it all in his head, but he can hear the whisper in his skull. So he responds in kind.   
It’s over anyway, I’m not going to let you die alone.

‘You can’t leave Cas.’

You’re my brother.

‘He means just as much to you, as both of us. He’s going to make you do something to Cas. I can handle dying on my own, I’ve done it before.’

Sammy, I won’t leave you alone.

‘We’ll see each other again. We always do. Tell Cas that I love him, and thank you. He saved my life.’

Sammy…

“Earth to Dean WINCHESTER!” Lucifer snaps in his face. “You kill Castiel, I’ll suck that grace right out of your body and we can go on and live happily ever after. For maybe a few more months.”

“I won’t.”

“Dean. It’s over.”

Dean turns to Castiel and sees nothing. No fear, no hopeless or sadness rolling off of him. It’s as if he’s at peace, that he’s accepted it.

“I won’t do that Cas. I love you, I can’t…” Dean rushes over to him and cups his cheek in his hand. “I can’t.”

“I love you too, but it’s over. I knew when we came here that I wasn’t leaving alive.”

“You have no soul, I can’t find you. You’ll dis…disappear.” Dean tries not to cry but fails miserably. “I couldn’t protect Sammy…”

“I don’t need you to protect me. Sammy didn’t need you to protect him anymore. Dean, the only person you were ever trying to protect was yourself.” Cas puts a hand to his chest. 

“Every person you lost broke you and every time you lost another you couldn’t bear to lose more. Dean, don’t worry about me or Sam. It’s time to do what you need to do.”

Dean locks eyes with Castiel before taking the angel blade from under his denim jacket. He spins around and plunges the blade deep into Lucifer’s chest. He watches blue-white whisps escape Lucifer’s mouth and flow to the ground, sizzling and evaporating as they touch the ground and leaving white ash behind. He slides to the ground with the body, catching Sam’s head to cushion its fall.

“I’m so sorry Sammy,” Dean whispers into Sam’s hair, kissing his forehead. “I know you forgive me but I’m so sorry.”

Dean hears Cas’s breath catch in his throat behind him. He steels his jaw and grips the angel blade as tight as he can. Cas puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder and Dean does it.  
He turns around and stabs Cas in the chest. He doesn’t look Cas in the eyes, he can’t. He cradles Castiel’s head so it doesn’t hit the cold floor. He feels blood spray from Cas’s mouth as he chokes and spits.

“Dea…Dean…” Cas gasps. “I…”

Dean looks Castiel in the eyes, watching the blue fade. “I love you. I’m right after you.”

Dean plants his lips on Cas’s and doesn’t let go until he feels Cas take his last breath.

He has no idea if the angel blade will work. Crowley said so many times that he can never die, but he is going to try. He looks at Sam’s body and back to Cas’s body before he turns the blade on himself. As it works its way into his stomach, Dean feels his body rip apart.

Then he sees the white light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major character death, but do they really die in this show? Pain, sex, suffering, sadness. Feels.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fluff, smut, and things do not appear what they seem.

Dean sinks his lips against Castiel’s and tastes coffee. Bacon. Maple syrup. He hears Sam’s pretend disgust in the background muffled by the amount of food he shoved in his mouth moments before. Dean doesn’t want to end the sweet kiss just to tell his brother to shut up. So instead he pinches Cas’s butt in front of him and smiles when Sam pretends to puke.

“Dean, eat,” Cas smiles back, shoving a plate of pancakes and bacon between them. “I want to get to the lake before night fall.”

He takes his food and sits at the breakfast nook with Sam. “Fine, but bitch over here does the dishes.”

“Hey, you were the last one awake,” Sam chides. “I gotta finish packing up the gear.”

“Fine, fine, fine.” Dean takes a bite and watches Cas do the dishes. Cas still doesn’t rinse them very well and each drink Dean takes from a cup still tastes like soap, but it’s nice to watch Cas fitting in so well here. 

~

“Sammy get the LEFT side!” Dean yells. “Come on, like you’ve never pitched a tent before!”

“I pitched mine, you two are the ones who decided to skinny dip when the sun was still up,” Sam smirks.

“You made us promise no sex noises on this trip, we did you a courtesy by going so far away,” Dean defends. “Right babe?”

Cas turns from stoking the fire and blushes. “I do not wish to discuss our activities with Sam.”

“No need to discuss, last week I walked in on you two in the laundry room.”

“Spin cycle,” Dean winks.

Sam gags, but then smiles earnestly. “I gotta quit giving you shit, I love our little family you know that.”

“No chick flick moments.”

They finally get the tent set up just as the last bit of light leaves the sky. Cas has water boiling over the fire for tea while Dean and Sam sip on their now-warm beers. Dean inhales the mix of campfire, pine and the lake. Totally worth driving the entire day to Minnesota for. He smiles at Sam, who is too busy watching the flames to notice. He turns to Cas and takes his hand. Cas squeezes back, smiling to the fire.

~

“Dean?”

“Wake up jerk!”

~

“Long story short, this Moose is going to take care of you for the rest of your lives. You are his everything. And if you break his heart, Heather, I will come after you. To the happy couple!” Dean holds up his glass and watches the wedding guests drink to his brother and his new wife.

Sam practically knocks him over with a hug and whispers in his ear “I love you Dean. Thank you jerk.”

“Bitch.”

~

Sam barely dropped off his camp gear and left the bunker to “go see a movie” when Dean jumped Castiel. He starts off sweet and lazy, but after a few minutes Cas deepens the kisses and pushes his body harder against Dean’s as he moans into his mouth. Dean loves it when Cas takes control. Dean isn’t one to give up control of anything to anyone except him—with Cas, Dean can’t get enough. So when Cas breaks away and drags him to their shared bedroom.

“Clothes, now,” Cas commands.

Dean strips himself as fast as humanly possible and lays on his back on the bed in anticipation of the next instruction. Cas takes his sweet time stripping off each article of clothing, locking eyes with Dean. First he pulls his shirt off, showing off the new tan he got at the lake this past week. The muscles in his shoulders and arms ripple when he moves his hands down to the buckle of his belt. In his periphery, Dean sees Cas’s hard cock trying to escape their boxer briefs after Cas pulls down his jeans and he swears he could come there and now when Cas finally frees it.

“On your stomach,” Cas commands.  
Well, this is going to be good, Dean thinks, obeying Cas without question. Typically if they’ve gone that long without fucking they get it over hard and fast and throw the occasional kink in the regular rotation. Dean grinds down into the mattress and is met with a slap to the ass.

“No, no, no,” Cas tisks. He rubs the spot again briefly before slapping harder a second time, eliciting a whine from Dean. “I told Sam to make it a double feature. I’m going to take my time.”

Dean rolls his eyes into the back of his head. He hears Cas moving towards the headboard and sees him tying rope to the posts. Dean whimpers—he loves being tied up and used by Cas. He waits until both wrists are bound before struggling. He tied them good this time—Dean will have to wear long sleeves for a week to avoid weird looks from Sam.

“Why didn’t you tie my ankles?” Dean asks.

“I need your legs to move,” Cas says from somewhere behind Dean. 

Dean shudders when he feels Cas’s lips kiss his left thigh. Cas’s lips and tongue trace shapes and letters across both thighs, his ass, to the crater of his lower back. Dean pushes his face into the pillow to stifle the moans until he remembers that Sam is gone. He pulls against his ties, wanting to badly to touch Cas in return. Cas’s hands rub across the expanse of his shoulders, paving way for more kisses and licks. When Cas’s lips hit Dean’s neck he grinds the mattress yet again.

“I told you no,” Cas breaks away. “Get on your knees. Pull them under you.”

Dean struggles a bit, but manages to get his knees under him. Pushing his collarbone and chin into the mattress, with his arms spread eagle to his sides and bound, and his ass up, his needy cock is exposed to the air and no longer sneaking friction on the sheets. 

“Please Cas, touch me. Please.”

“Sir.”

Dean smiles. Usually the sir/master thing makes Cas wince. “Sir.”

“When I feel like it,” Cas teases, climbing onto the bed behind Dean. Dean hears the familiar pop of the lube bottle and loses his breath. He feels Cas pour an obscene amount down the crack of his ass and feels it drip down into the right place. Cas’s fingers soon follow and he starts off teasing around the rim with his thumb. Dean does his best to push back, needing to be breached.

“Fine, if you want it so bad, take it,” Cas whispers, entering with two fingers and going all the way to the hilt in a smooth second. 

It stings and is only uncomfortable in that sweet way. Dean remembers a time in which Cas would have to spend nearly an hour working him open slowly to even take two fingers. Now Dean pushes back into Cas trying to bury those fingers deeper and deeper. He feels Cas steady his hand on the small of his back as he lets Dean fuck himself on his fingers, all the while cooing dirty things:

“You slut.”

“Fuck yourself.”

“You are so fucking sexy like this.”

Dean feels a third finger added and pushes back faster and harder, feeling that sting of fatigue in his arms and rope burn on his wrists but he doesn’t care. Dean feels his cock dripping on the sheets below him and he doesn’t care about sleeping in the wet sheets, he just wants to come. He wants Cas to make him come.

Cas removes his fingers and Dean screams—legit screams—at the frustration causes by their absence. He doesn’t care, he lets it all go with Cas. He indulges in things that cause him and Cas pleasure. Life is too short for hangups in the bedroom. And laundry room. And the backseat of Baby. And Sam’s bed—just one time.

“You know why I kicked Sam out so fast?” Cas says, Dean feeling him get off the bed. “Because I saw a package at the door when we drove up. Something I ordered a while back.”  
Dean pants. “Whatever it is just do it, please sir. PLEASE!”

Cas chuckles and assumes his position behind Dean. He hears the pop of the lube again and tries to figure out what kind of toy Cas has in store. He doesn’t get the chance to wonder long when he feels something cold and round push into his ass.

“It’s called a bullet wand,” Cas says. “And there is a remote that I can control.”

Dean relishes the feeling of the small egg settling into his ass, and while he was wishing for something bigger and attached to Cas’s body, he knows Castiel will not disappoint him. He feels Cas move off the bed back on, laying on his back and shoving his head between Dean’s legs. Cas takes one of his balls in his mouth and sucks gently, causing Dean to buck and beg.

That’s when Cas makes use of the remote. The vibrations jolt through Dean and nonsense words fall out of his mouth. He barely registers Cas wrapping his lips around his cock as the vibrations get turned up higher and higher and higher until Dean is screaming Cas’s name. He doesn’t realize Cas has swallowed every last drop and already untied his wrists until Cas puts a hand on his back to ground him.

“Let me massage your shoulders,” he says, climbing into bed next to him.

Dean finally collapses, rolling onto his back to avoid any more friction on his too-sensitive cock. “What about you?”

Cas smiles. “I don’t like being tied up, but I would like to give the toy a spin.”

Dean captures Cas’s mouth in a kiss before reaching for the toy and the lube.

~

“DEAN!”

Dean turns to see the vamp coming right for him. He swings his blade and takes it down without breaking a sweat.

“Thanks Sam,” Dean replies. “Is that the last one?”

“I think so,” Sam confirms. “Is it just me or are they getting stronger?”

“Stronger,” Dean wipes his blade clean as they walk back to the Impala. “Let’s call Bobby and meet him at Ellen’s.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

~

“DEAN!”

~

“DAD!”

Dean runs towards his daughter’s bedroom. “Robbie? ROBBIE?”

“I’m…in the bathroom.” He hears a soft cry. “I uhm…well…I don’t know.”

“Are you okay?” Dean approaches the door.

“Yeah, I mean, maybe. I need. Uhm…can you call Aunt Jody or Aunt Heather?”

“What’s wrong Robs?” Dean sounds concerned and pulls his phone out of his pocket, texting Cas to come home NOW.

“There’s blood in my underwear,” she says so quietly he can barely hear her.

“Okay listen Robs, everything is going to be okay, I’m on it. You are fine, trust me.” He texts Heather to inform her as to what is going on. Heather replies back that she can be there with supplies in about thirty minutes.

“I trust you Daddy,” Robs cries.

“While we wait for Aunt Heather, let’s talk about what’s going on.”

~

“I think we should get a dog,” Dean says as they walk past the pet store on the boardwalk.

“I barely have time cleaning up after you,” Sam laughs, taking a sip from his pop.

Cas takes Dean’s hand as they walk down the boardwalk. “I think we should have a baby.”

~

“Take care of your brother, Dean,” John says and he puts Sammy in Dean’s arms. 

“Dad?”

“GO OUTSIDE!”

Dean takes Sam out of the house, turning around to see the flames in Sam’s nursery window.

~~~~~~~~~~~

“Dean?”

Dean opens his eyes. He’s lying on a grey couch in a grey room. No furnishings. No light source but a soft warm light is everywhere. He looks to see Castiel and Sam standing over him.

He remembers killing Sam, freeing his body from Lucifer’s grip. He remembers killing Castiel, cradling their bodies in his arms. He remembers the first blade.

“But, wait, I can’t die…”

“You didn’t,” Castiel smiles. “He brought you here.”

“Who?”

“God. We’re in heaven.”

Dean stands up. “What the fuck?”

“Dean, Lucifer is dead. I felt him die when you killed us,” Sam says. 

“If this is some ultimate sacrifice shit…”

“It’s more like you finally set me free.”

Dean, Cas and Sam all turn to the new voice in the room. Cas smiles.

“Father.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have had an idea for an alternate seasons 8-10 in which Dean's daughter is brought back to the past from the future and some of the Robbie scenes are me toying with her character. I may write that saga, don't know. Robbie is short for Roberta, because Dean totally named his daughter after Bobby :)
> 
> Also, as far as I'm concerned, Sub!Dean is canon so there.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I have finally finished this story.
> 
> Dean, Sam and Castiel get some answers. Nothing will ever be the same.
> 
> I realize this may be anti-climatic for some, but this was always the ending for this story. No apologies.

Dean stares into the face of God. “Oh for fuck’s sake.”

God shrugs. “I’ve been in this body for so long, I didn’t want to give it up.”

“But…Chuck? You were inside Chuck all along? I knew it,” Sam says to Dean.

“Father, you were on earth? Why didn’t you stop it? All of it, any of it?” Castiel’s eyes glow blue. “We lost so many, fought so hard. Heaven was torn apart and then some and you just sat there in that vessel and wrote fanfiction?”

“Castiel, son,” God approaches and puts a hand to his shoulder. Castiel instantly softens under the touch. “I knew there was nothing that I could do.”

“You’re God, you can like, do ANYTHING,” Dean says. “That’s bullshit.”

“Dean,” Sam says under his breath. “Stop swearing at God.”

Dean rolls his eyes.

“Dean, you have every right to be upset with me,” God begins. “I knew that when Lucifer got to the surface of earth that if he gained enough power I could never stop him. So I began to hide myself in vessels. They never knew I was there, of course. But I couldn’t stop hearing prayers, the calls of my children. The questions from the angels. So I locked myself inside of Chuck and threw away the key, so to speak. I basically went to sleep. Chuck had no idea he was carrying me inside of him and I essentially did not exist.”

“How?” Castiel whispers.

“Ancient Enochian. The kind spoken and written long before I was given the angels.”

“Given? Didn’t you create everything?” Sam asks.

God smirks. “Not really. My Mother was actually mad about them.”

“Mother?” Castiel asks again, looking like he might have a heart attack.

“Sit down,” God instructs.

Dean, Sam and Cas find themselves sitting in a booth in an empty diner, burgers and pie all around. Dean, of course, digs in. Sam kicks him under the table.

“Please, eat. I’ll explain everything.” God smiles. “I am not the only God. I don’t even like the term God. Makes me feel like I’m so special. Doesn’t give all the other Gods on earth credit. Anyway, I didn’t create earth or life. Mother did, I think. She gave it to me one day when I was old enough—I’m the baby in the family so all my brothers and sisters already had galaxies to play with. She told me it was my responsibility to keep everything safe. Provide a safe place for life to continue. It was so boring until humans evolved. Mother found out and nearly smote the entire thing, but she thought you could be saved. So she gave me the angels. But there were so many humans, I needed more. So I commanded the original angels, the archangels, to reproduce and make more angels, the lower order. Castiel, you are the offspring of Saraqael, who sadly perished not long after your creation, and Gabriel.”

“HAHAHA Gabriel’s your father!” Dean laughs.

Castiel glares at Dean and kicks him under the table.

God continues. “Things started to get out of hand and I kept sending the angels down to take care of it. They became restless and angry. Lucifer began to resent me…”

“We know how that goes,” Sam interjected.

“That doesn’t explain why you hid instead of helped,” Castiel pipes up.

“Lucifer was too strong for me. I screwed up and created a monster. He was able to use the Horsemen—another gift from my Mother to control my creation—and used them against me. So I hid in this body, hoping that I could figure out what to do. I was too embarrassed to ask my Mother for more help, and my siblings are eons away. All I could do until I figured it out was watch and hope someone could save it all. And you did, Dean. You were able to kill Lucifer—which was my key. I made sure that his death could unlock me from my vessel. So when he died, I woke up.”

“You coward,” Castiel spits. “You fucked everything up and didn’t know how to fix it so instead of doing something you just ran away and left them all to die. Left us to suffer.”

“I see the error of my ways. I mean I was just a child when I got this galaxy, I had no idea the responsibility. Now look, I have a heaven full of souls and Hell and Purgatory wiped clean as if they never existed. There’s nothing to keep it going. I need to find a new galaxy.”

“Just put us all back on earth,” Dean says, swallowing his pie.

“Earth is gone, Dean.” God says softly. “Lucifer somehow tied his life to the life of the planet. He died, it died. I don’t even know how. Don’t you see what a shitty being I am? Man, Mother is going to kill me.”

“So who let Lucifer and Michael out in the first place?” Sam asked.

“The angels,” God replies.

“How?” asks Cas.

“You think you were the only one to give up your Grace, son? Crowley found your Grace in Hell and gave it to Dean, but all the Grace that floated down there made its way to the only host that was familiar, a fallen archangel. Lucifer and Michael set themselves free, set the Horsemen free.”

“So we’re dead, earth is gone, now what?” Dean sighs. “We just party in heaven forever, right? I have my brother, my angel, things are good. Cheer up Chuck. There are other planets in your galaxy, right? We can start over. I mean, you can. Maybe create some women…”

“Dean,” Cas chastises.

“Just for mating, Cas,” Dean reaches for his hand. 

“Took the two of you long enough. You aren’t the first angel to fall in love with a human, Castiel. I always took it as a form of flattery.” God holds up a hand. “No, I never said nephalim were abominations, that was all the angels. They were worried that if they diluted the angelic blood line that they would eventually lose all power over humans. Sheesh, at least demons were honest. Figures my Mother’s angels would be so devious.”

“Now we are in heaven, we can just be happy, right?” Sam asks.

God nods. “I’ll pick another planet, but it could be a millennia before it’s ready for humans. If ever. It’s all just one evolutionary crap shoot. Maybe the next time around dogs will win out.” He laughs. “Go to your heaven. You can visit Ash and Bobby, Ellen and Jo, everyone you loved who is here. Sadly, souls in Hell or destroyed are gone forever. Mary. John. Jess. Crowley is gone too. Go, be happy. When I need you, I will come find you. Just know that I loved you. All of you.”

God disappears.

Dean stands up. “Sam, we have a lot to talk about.”

“You owe me some details,” he replies, pulling Dean into a hug. “Jerk.”

“Bitch.”

~

There is no concept of time in heaven. Dean knows night when it falls and day when it breaks. They haven’t aged. Some days Dean spends the entire day in bed with Cas. Some days they spend the day with Bobby and Sam watching the game and drinking beer. Sometimes Cas takes Dean to his now second-favorite heaven and they watch the man with autism flying a kite.

Dean had convinced himself very early on that this isn’t really real—technically they don’t even exist anymore. But he’s okay with that. He gets to see Sammy happy and he gets to make love to Cas. He gets to be honest with himself. He told Sammy what he really thought of growing up a hunter, of the exact moment he fell in love with Cas—and then years later when he finally admitted it to himself. He told funny stories about Crowley. He atoned for all he did as a demon. He told Cas about his visions after they died, about their daughter, and the camping trip.

To say some of those strange dreams are gone is a lie. They haunt him. Especially the visions he had of a daughter. He misses that he’ll never know her, that she will never exist. He dreams about her sometimes, but he knows she’s not real. It’s sad, but at the same time he’s relieved that she won’t experience the hell that earth became. He doesn’t tell Cas or Sam about these deeper feelings. Some things he keeps for himself.

Cas has a much better idea of the passage of time. He’s able to remember to celebrate the first millennial anniversary. Dean thought it was sweet, Sam was unnerved by having been in heaven that long. God visits them on that day, tells them that he hopes a multi-cellular organism will evolve on Keplar soon. Dean demands to name the planet. God lets him. He hopes that a multi-cellular organism will evolve on Jefferson Starship soon.

~

God made them the three archangels. Dean gets white wings, Sam gets gold. Cas gets his old black wings back.

Sam was not prepared for the feeling Grace gave him. He wept and laughed and couldn’t stop hugging Dean. Dean was also overwhelmed by the jolt of it, his own Grace surpassing the hits of Cas’s by a long shot. God said he trusted them. They, besides himself, are the only ones who knew what happened. They could make sure it didn’t happen again. 

They promised to try.

~

FIN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story was named for a song by Ani Difranco "Hearse" and based on the lyrics:
> 
> I don't want to strive for nothing anymore,  
> I just want to lie here with you,  
> Keep the wolves outside the door,  
> There is nothing in this world you could ever show me that could ever matter more.
> 
> Little baby  
> In the next room dreaming,  
> Is just icing on the cake,  
> There is nothing like dancing,   
> A dance of give and take,  
> One step forward,   
> One step sideways,  
> A helpless feeling,  
> When the earth shakes.
> 
> I will always be your lover,  
> Even after our atoms are dispersed,  
> We will be pushing up daisies,  
> And my crush will just be getting worse,  
> I will follow you into the next life,  
> Like a dog chasing after a hearse.
> 
> I just don't want to strive for nothing anymore,  
> I just want to lie here with you,  
> Keep the wolves outside the door,  
> There is nothing in this world you could ever show me that could ever matter more


End file.
